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Added 28 September 2026

expressive

/ɪkˈspɹɛsɪv/ adjective

adjective Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about expressive at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

Effectively conveying thought or feeling.
expressive dancing
Conveying the speaker's emotions and/or attitudes, in addition to the denotative or literal meaning.
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

Any word or phrase that expresses (that the speaker, writer, or signer has) a certain attitude toward or information about the referent.
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.

Origin

From Middle French expressif.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

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