Dictionary

expensiveness en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• [-ɪvˌnəs]
• [-ˈspɪnsɪvˌnəs]
• /ɛkˈspɛnsɪvnəs/
• (US) audio
• [ɪk-]

Etymology

Etymology tree English expensive Proto-Germanic *-inōną Proto-Indo-European *-dyé- Proto-Germanic *-atjaną Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Germanic *-þuz Proto-Germanic *-assuz Proto-Germanic *-inassuz Proto-West Germanic *-nassī Old English -nes Middle English -nesse English -ness English expensiveness From expensive + -ness.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) The state of being expensive; the entailing of great expense.
   • 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.
   • 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.
   • 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, →OCLC:

Forms

Translations (14)

id kemahalan (quality of being expensive) · pt careza (quality of being expensive) · sh skupoća (quality of being expensive) · de Teuerheit (quality of being expensive) · de Kostspieligkeit (quality of being expensive) · wa tchiresse (quality of being expensive) · lv dārgums (quality of being expensive) · es carestía (quality of being expensive) · vo jer (quality of being expensive) · wa tchirté (quality of being expensive) · fr cherté (quality of being expensive) · de Teuerung (quality of being expensive) · tr pahalılık (quality of being expensive) · lv dārdzība (quality of being expensive)