How to spell expensive

hear itex·pen·sive/ɪk'spɛnsɪv/adjectiveSilent and tricky

What it means: High in price; not affordable.

In a sentence: The shiny toy was too expensive to buy.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as expencive or expesive.

Same family: inexpensive, expenses, expensively, costly. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Expensive” comes from the Latin verb *pendere*, meaning “to weigh,” which also gave us words like “expense,” “pension,” and “pendulum.” Over time, the idea of “weighing out money” turned into our modern sense of something that costs a lot.

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Words like this

extension · creative · expansion

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