expressive

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expressive

/ɪkˈspɹɛsɪv/ UK
/ɪkˈspɹɛsɪv/ Canada, US
/ɛkˈspɹɛsɪv/ Canada, US
/ɛkˈspɹæsɛv/
/ɪkˈspɹesɪv/ Australia
/əkˈspɹesəv/ New Zealand

Rhymes with -ɛsɪv

Where it comes from

From Middle French expressif.

adjective more expressive · most expressive

Effectively conveying thought or feeling. expressive dancing
Conveying the speaker's emotions and/or attitudes, in addition to the denotative or literal meaning. These adults performed significantly more poorly than a group of 28 control adults on all measures of articulation and expressive and receptive language.
Able to represent a number of ideas or concepts. A programming language that is Turing complete is more expressive than one that is not.

Opposite: inexpressive, unexpressive

noun expressives

Any word or phrase that expresses (that the speaker, writer, or signer has) a certain attitude toward or information about the referent. Consider the case of expressives, where no prior knowledge of the speaker’s attitudes are required to interpret the utterance. In (43) ["That jerk Alexa keeps making me look bad"], Steve does not need to know (and in fact has no prior knowledge of) anything relating to Siri’s attitudes towards Alexa
A word or phrase, belonging to a distinct word class or having distinct morphosyntactic properties, with semantic symbolism (for example, an onomatopoeia), variously considered either a synonym, a hypernym or a hyponym of ideophone. Cross-linguistically 'expressives' are more commonly termed 'ideophones' [...] Expressives are often cited as a distinctive shared feature of the Austroasiatic language family (Diffloth and Zide 1992; Osada 1992 (Mundari); Svantesson 1983 (Kammu)). [...] I do not make a distinction between expressiv
Similar: sound-symbolic

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: communicatory, revelatory, communicative, indicative of, indicative, significant, vocal, articulate, eloquent, demonstrative, meaningful, revealing, telling, illustrative, graphic, suggestive

adjective

Opposite: inexpressive, unexpressive

Translations

Every language

adj effectively conveying feeling

Español	expresivo
Português	expressivo, significativo
Français	expressif
Deutsch	ausdrucksvoll, ausdrucksstark
Italiano	espressivo
Ελληνικά	εκφραστικός ekfrastikós
Română	expresiv, plin de expresie
Русский	вырази́тельный vyrazítelʹnyj

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MLA

"expressive." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/expressive. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

expressive. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/expressive

Chicago

"expressive." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/expressive.

BibTeX

@misc{expressive_2026,
  title = {expressive},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/expressive},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}