expressive
ex·pres·sive/ɪkˈspɹɛsɪv/adjective, noun
expressive is spelled E-X-P-R-E-S-S-I-V-E: 10 letters and 3 syllables (ex·pres·sive). It appears 2.7 times per million words in written English, the 16,455th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As an adjective, expressive means “Effectively conveying thought or feeling” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).
How many letters and syllables are in expressive?
| Letters | 10: E-X-P-R-E-S-S-I-V-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: ex·pres·sive |
| In writing | 2.7 times per million words; the 16,455th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is expressive?
Expressive appears 2.7 times per million words in written English, the 16,455th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce expressive?
- UK /ɪkˈspɹɛsɪv/
- US /ɪkˈspɹɛsɪv/
- US /ɛkˈspɹɛsɪv/
Expressive has 3 syllables, split ex·pres·sive in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-expressive.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with expressive?
5 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as expressive from its last stressed vowel (/ɛsɪv/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of expressive
- more expressive comparative
- most expressive superlative
- expressives plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does expressive mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Effectively conveying thought or feeling.
expressive dancing
- 2
Conveying the speaker's emotions and/or attitudes, in addition to the denotative or literal meaning.
- 3
Able to represent a number of ideas or concepts.
A programming language that is Turing complete is more expressive than one that is not.
noun
- 1
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 knowl
- 2
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.
I examine the valency of expressives, a class of ideophones in Mundari, comparing their behaviors as predicates to those of reduplicated verb forms.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Expressive in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense effectively conveying feeling:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | expressif |
| German | ausdrucksvoll, ausdrucksstark |
| Portuguese | expressivo, significativo |
| Spanish | expresivo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does expressive come from?
From Middle French expressif.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).