adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
an expensive commodity
▪ Consumers began to find that they could afford more expensive commodities.
an expensive gift
▪ He was always showering Louise with expensive gifts.
an expensive/cheap restaurant
▪ He took her out to an expensive restaurant.
cheap/expensive
▪ He bought her a bottle of expensive French perfume.
expensive/sophisticated
▪ He was a man of expensive tastes (= he liked expensive things.)
make sth the best/worst/most expensive etc
▪ Over 80,000 people attended, making it the biggest sporting event in the area.
work out expensive/cheap etc (=be expensive or cheap)
▪ If we go by taxi, it’s going to work out very expensive.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ Trendier than my Tissot Seastar, but not as expensive.
▪ This is expensive, but not as expensive as piddling around.
▪ Wind costs 10.9 cents, geothermal 11.3 cents and solar at 15.1 cents, was more than twice as expensive as nuclear.
▪ It can be just as long, just as expensive as a real lawsuit, sometimes worse.
▪ That it's expensive; it's as expensive as you want to make it.
▪ That would tell you the politicians are about to vote on something that would be twice as expensive as the alternative.
▪ Although the second method sounds like it gives twice the cover, it is far from twice as expensive.
▪ Even if they keep within budget, nuclear plants are at least twice as expensive to build as coal stations.
extremely
▪ Pattern making is a highly skilled occupation and patterns can be extremely expensive to produce.
▪ Privatizing to a monopoly is not only senseless but extremely expensive.
▪ For example selective computed tomography could be performed instead of whole body scans, which are extremely expensive.
▪ As for radon, Rudy said looking for radon in drinking water would be extremely expensive and might not help public health.
▪ It is an extremely expensive process that, left unchecked, will go on for ever.
▪ It was a formidable and extremely expensive task.
▪ Reprocessing is a highly technically demanding and extremely expensive operation, involving the extraction of uranium and plutonium from the spent fuel.
less
▪ Her guides would have lemon squash because it was better for them and less expensive.
▪ Buy margarine instead of butter; it is much less expensive.
▪ The navy says that burial at sea is less expensive, demands less shipyard work, and is isolated from human activity.
▪ A satellite that can stabilize itself would be less expensive than those that depend on steering jets.
▪ It's not comfortable and, while it's quite big and quite cheap, there are bigger, less expensive alternatives.
▪ What would make this task more efficient, less time-consuming, and thus less expensive?
▪ You may well find some practitioners more or less expensive.
▪ They are more convenient and often less expensive.-Buy in bulk.
more
▪ The real difficulty now is that risk insurance will be harder to buy, and will certainly be more expensive.
▪ The smaller ones are more expensive and a greater delicacy than the larger ones.
▪ Whether or not the employer should pay the excess for a more expensive substitution depends on the circumstances of the case.
▪ The more expensive we make the United States, the fewer international visitors we will attract.
▪ This is more expensive but it has a particular advantage in television coverage.
▪ Whipped butter and flavoured butters are more expensive than butter weight for weight.
▪ Had the debt been only slightly more expensive, those operations could not have taken place.
▪ These ministers lost none of their fervor for souls, but they became less mobile and more expensive to support.
most
▪ Auctions were held to sell off the town lots, those nearest the station being the most expensive.
▪ San Francisco remains the most expensive housing market, with a median home price of $ 264, 800.
▪ Today she is one of the most expensive celebrities in the world.
▪ They were far from the most expensive items in the Horwitch galley.
▪ They are, generally speaking, the most expensive type.
▪ A: $ 19. 50 is the most expensive seat other than luxury boxes.
▪ The most expensive item consisted of several kinds of shellfish in a sauce and sounded as if it was better avoided.
▪ The most expensive Senate campaign in 1996 was that of Jesse Helms, R-N.
prohibitively
▪ The flight to quality by investors has made equity financing prohibitively expensive for all but the soundest of companies.
▪ Long-term nursing home care insurance is prohibitively expensive.
▪ Buying new glass and having it cut to size can be prohibitively expensive for the home tank builder.
▪ Pollen-moving wind would have been prohibitively expensive to manufacture.
▪ The costs of computer software is not prohibitively expensive in addition, hardware costs have also fallen substantially.
▪ But, given that penguins are relatively rare birds, that turned out to be prohibitively expensive.
▪ For families of low income such items are almost certainly prohibitively expensive.
▪ The newer ones, while they do not cause these problems, are prohibitively expensive.
relatively
▪ Overdrafts Asking your bank for an overdraft is cheaper than going into the red without permission but can still be relatively expensive.
▪ One practical problem with the drug is that it is relatively expensive compared with phenytoin or phenobarbital.
▪ The photocopying of typed sheets, although relatively expensive, gives clear and reliably consistent copies.
▪ However the method is still relatively expensive and therefore its use is still restricted in Western hospitals.
▪ Often they are in relatively expensive sites on high streets with costly business rates.
▪ They are relatively expensive items - but not compared to plant downtime.
▪ Thus the entire manufacturing process tends to be relatively expensive compared with other forms of production.
so
▪ Buses and underground trains were so expensive that it was no longer accurate to regard them as public transport.
▪ He expressed surprise when he learned we were staying there because he thought it was so expensive.
▪ Evaluating the toxicology of any new pesticide is now so expensive that few new compounds are reaching the market.
▪ Space stations are so expensive that they can not be placed in short-lived, unstable orbits.
▪ Local gentry and landowners found the gang's exploits so expensive and unremitting that measures had to be taken to apprehend them.
▪ Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with nowadays.
▪ As that is so expensive to collect, why not abolish it now?
▪ Why a pair was so expensive just four years ago is something you could dwell on well into the night.
too
▪ Speculation that the Dolphin Centre could be used has been ruled out by Mr Boyle who says it would be too expensive.
▪ They also say the 25-ton stainless steel casks used at some plants to stored cooled material above ground are too expensive.
▪ And they're too expensive to buy.
▪ Private doctors are too expensive for most workers, and government health department visits can span an entire day.
▪ The air fare from London was too expensive for Maggie to come regularly.
▪ And arguing that elections are too expensive is a helluva case for monarchy.
▪ At around £5 per foot in 1964 it was not considered too expensive.
▪ Retailers, however, say advertising is too expensive and smaller businesses can't always afford it.
very
▪ Nordstrom has not publicly put a cost on its plans, but they are going to be very expensive.
▪ Rock excavation is obviously very expensive.
▪ The price of eating out is similar to London but alcohol is very expensive.
▪ Taking a very small issue public can be very expensive.
▪ Yes, and it is very expensive.
▪ Supply Chain Management Until recently, these inventory management strategies were implemented through very expensive computer systems and private networks.
▪ Both drugs and other addicting things are very expensive and very easy to get, more so in London.
▪ Rinse additives tend to be very expensive but are used in very low concentrations and are invariably mechanically dosed.
■ NOUN
car
▪ I hear that all the older boys are driving big expensive cars and living the life of Riley.
▪ One happy side-effect of manufacturing laughably expensive cars is, however, a certain price insensitivity in the product itself.
▪ The Caterham has been an expensive car to run, although not prohibitively so.
▪ Maybe he feels he merits and can now afford a more expensive car.
▪ You began to see them in the expensive cars.
▪ At £25,000, it is Caterham's most expensive car yet.
▪ It was a big expensive car, must be some one for one of the neighbours.
clothes
▪ They all wore the most expensive clothes and had beautiful, long, curly hair.
▪ They decided not to buy expensive clothes for the wedding.
▪ And she is power dressing, wearing beautifully-cut, expensive clothes.
▪ With his expensive clothes, elite education, and distinguished demeanor, he was different from the rustic and plain Avon folk.
▪ When he did appear, just before opening night he looked an impressive figure in his expensive clothes.
▪ One of the largest shops of the Diamond was Magee's, the tweed shop, which sold expensive clothes and souvenirs.
▪ I bought such beautiful, expensive clothes.
▪ There was a little wistfulness about these village girls when they looked at the rich convent girls in their expensive clothes.
equipment
▪ Once, the computer network was viewed as a means of sharing expensive equipment.
▪ In many cases, expensive equipment is being discarded.
▪ The report highlighted the under-utilisation of expensive equipment.
▪ But while more sophisticated procedures may save time, they often rely on more expensive equipment.
▪ This is particularly important when the installation of expensive equipment is contemplated. 3.
▪ Those with older or less expensive equipment might find it useful.
item
▪ In the building and the big yard beside it there were cases of very expensive items.
▪ They were far from the most expensive items in the Horwitch galley.
▪ A folio edition was an expensive item, but even cheaper quarto editions of most writers were not available readily.
▪ The most expensive item consisted of several kinds of shellfish in a sauce and sounded as if it was better avoided.
▪ The expensive item slithered off his back like a shed snakeskin.
▪ Typically, such delicacies will be among the more expensive items on a menu.
▪ Longer floor tiles in front of expensive items will make her feel more relaxed and expansive.
▪ More expensive items in the same range should be finely knotted and possess cleanly articulated and symmetrically arranged decorative forms.
mistake
▪ This could prove an expensive mistake.
▪ For, as Richard said the wrong choice could prove an expensive mistake.
▪ Neither of them was competent to do that type of business and they made an expensive mistake.
▪ Aunt Tossie, ever loving, ever kind, had made an expensive mistake.
▪ Instructing the wrong engineer can be a horribly expensive mistake.
taste
▪ His wife had expensive tastes and the kids always wanted new clothes or bikes or games.
▪ Mark had always had very grand, expensive tastes.
▪ Mr and Mrs Field had expensive tastes.
▪ He'd looked as though he had expensive tastes.
▪ Muriel had already spoken to Stephen about Lily's expensive taste in soap.
way
▪ But for growers, it can be an expensive way of insuring against risk, suggests Mr Dickie.
▪ High interest rates tend to make it an expensive way to borrow.
▪ If this is true, it seems an expensive way of satisfying one's curiosity.
▪ Spartan carries important data from that experiment, which tested lighter and less expensive ways to put large structures in space.
▪ The dot.economy turned out to be just a more expensive way of selling old-economy goods at knockdown prices.
▪ At $ 1 million each, a Tomahawk is an expensive way to blast beach fortifications.
▪ You may by now have learned that this is probably the most expensive way to crash!
▪ The detergent feeds often fitted are expensive ways of using chemicals.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
fabulously rich/expensive/successful etc
▪ And she must have been fabulously rich to live in a house like this.
the biggest/tallest/most expensive etc ... on earth
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ an expensive restaurant
▪ Do you have any less expensive cameras?
▪ Movies are incredibly expensive to make these days.
▪ My uncle took us out to dinner at an expensive restaurant.
▪ She spends most of her money on expensive clothes.
▪ Smoking can be an expensive habit.
▪ Taxis are so expensive - that's why I usually take the bus.
▪ The house is on West Boston Avenue, Detroit's most expensive residential area.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And here you will be seated in an expensive chair.
▪ And it's not one of their more expensive ones, either.
▪ College is more expensive and more critical to middle-class status than in the past.
▪ Comparisons reveal that further-processed fish products are more expensive than frozen raw fillets and steaks.
▪ It will be both a richer world and a less expensive one.
▪ Means testing was expensive, clumsy and time-wasting.
▪ Spartan carries important data from that experiment, which tested lighter and less expensive ways to put large structures in space.