Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell express

hear itex·press/ɪk'sprɛs/verbRules and real life

What it means: To convey thoughts or emotions.

In a sentence: I can express my feelings with a smile.

The part people get wrong

Watch for double s. Often misspelled as exress or expres.

Same family: expression, expressed, expressing, compress, depress. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Express comes from Latin 'exprimere', meaning 'to press out,' from 'ex-' (out) and 'premere' (to press). The original sense was very physical—like pressing juice out of fruit—before it also came to mean 'to show or state a feeling or idea.'

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