Word.ws English Dictionary

costful

costful adjective: expensive; sumptuous.

Adjective

costful (comparative more costful, superlative most costful)

  1. (archaic) Expensive; sumptuous.
  2. Indicative of expenditure or loss; costly.
    • The fight against improved means, methods and materials in the construction industry, in shipping by rail or by sea, in the printing industry and most everywhere has been hugely costful to American consumers and involves a great waste of resources.1965, Bertie Charles Forbes, Forbes, volume 95, page 78

Forms of costful

comparativemore costful
superlativemost costful

Origin of costful

From Middle English costful, equivalent to cost + -ful. Perhaps influenced by Middle English costful (“fraught with hardship”), a different word.

Words formed from costful

Questions about costful

What does costful mean?
Costful means expensive; sumptuous.
What part of speech is costful?
Costful is an adjective.

Words near costful in the dictionary

  1. Costessey
  2. costest
  3. costeth
  4. Costești
  5. Costeștii din Vale
  6. costful
  7. costfully
  8. costibite
  9. costicartilage
  10. costicartilages
  11. costicosteroid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: costful (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: “costful.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/costful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.