Meanings
plural expensivenesses
- uncountableusuallyThe state of being expensive; the entailing of great expense.
Apart from the expensiveness of everything, there were recurrent shortages of this and that, which, of course, always hit the poor rather than the rich.
1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter IX, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC2 more examples
1743, John Wesley, An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, London: G. Whitfield, 1796, A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part II, III.1, p. 212, https://books.google.ca/books?id=A6FgAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Surely you cannot be ignorant, that the sinfulness of fine apparel lies chiefly in the expensiveness. In that it is robbing God and the Poor; it is defrauding the fatherless and the widow; it is wasting the food of the hungry, and with-holding his raiment from the naked, to consume it on our own lusts.
1922, Emily Post, Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, Chapter 14: Formal Dinners, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14314/14314-h/14314-h.htm Enchanting dining-rooms and tables have been achieved with an outlay amounting to comparatively nothing. ¶ There is a dining-room in a certain small New York house that is quite as inviting as it is lacking in expensiveness.
Synonyms & antonyms
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Translations
French cherté
- chertéquality of being expensive
German Teuerheit, Kostspieligkeit
- Teuerheitquality of being expensive
- Kostspieligkeitquality of being expensive
- Teuerungquality of being expensive
Indonesian kemahalan
- kemahalanquality of being expensive
Latvian dārdzība, dārgums
- dārdzībaquality of being expensive
- dārgumsquality of being expensive
Portuguese careza
- carezaquality of being expensive
Spanish carestía
- carestíaquality of being expensive
Turkish pahalılık
- pahalılıkquality of being expensive
Cite this entry
expensiveness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/expensiveness
“expensiveness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/expensiveness. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “expensiveness,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/expensiveness.
Source: expensiveness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.