Word.ws English Dictionary

big-ticket

big-ticket adjective: costly or expensive; having a high price.

Adjective

big-ticket (not comparable)

  1. Costly or expensive; having a high price.
    • Doing careful research before purchasing big-ticket items such as electronics, appliances, and automobiles can ensure that an investment lasts for many years.
    • Other big-ticket projects are the Northern Powerhouse Rail proposed infrastructure upgrade, for which a budget of £39bn over 20 years has been sought, [...].2020 December 2, Industry Insider, “The costs of cutting carbon”, in Rail, page 76
  2. Of major importance or prominence.

Origin of big-ticket

Emerged in the United States in the 1930s; refers directly to the literal paper price tags or receipts ("tickets") attached to retail goods; larger, more expensive purchases (like appliances, cars, or furniture) required more prominent, high-value price tags; over time, the phrase transitioned from describing the physical tag to figuratively describing the expensive item itself.

Phrases with big-ticket

Questions about big-ticket

What does big-ticket mean?
Big-ticket means costly or expensive; having a high price.
What part of speech is big-ticket?
Big-ticket is an adjective.

Words near big-ticket in the dictionary

  1. big-sisterly
  2. big-sized
  3. big-sky thinking
  4. big-tent
  5. big-tentism
  6. big-ticket
  7. big-ticket item
  8. big-ticket items
  9. big-time
  10. big-timed
  11. big-timer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: big-ticket (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “big-ticket.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/big-ticket. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.