How to use expressive in a sentence
40 example sentences · adjective, noun
Expressive means effectively conveying thought or feeling. Example: “A programming language that is Turing complete is more expressive than one that is not.”
Examples of expressive by meaning
adjectiveEffectively conveying thought or feeling.
- a gesture expressive of the utmost contempt
adjectiveConveying the speaker's emotions and/or attitudes, in addition to the denotative or literal meaning.
- These adults performed significantly more poorly than a group of 28 control adults on all measures of articulation and expressive and receptive language.2008, Louise Cummings, Clinical Linguistics, page 270
- This volume provides a detailed account of the syntax of expressive language, that is, utterances that express, rather than describe, the emotions and attitudes of the speaker.2019, Daniel Gutzmann, The Grammar of Expressivity
adjectiveAble to represent a number of ideas or concepts.
- A programming language that is Turing complete is more expressive than one that is not.
nounAny word or phrase that expresses (that the speaker, writer, or signer has) a certain attitude toward or information...
- Consider the case of expressives, where no prior knowledge of the speaker’s attitudes are required to interpret the utterance.2017, Tammi Leann Stout, An investigation of projection and temporal reference in Kaqchikel (dissertation for the University of Texas at...
nounA word or phrase, belonging to a distinct word class or having distinct morphosyntactic properties, with semantic...
- I examine the valency of expressives, a class of ideophones in Mundari, comparing their behaviors as predicates to those of reduplicated verb forms.2017, Sam Gray, Classifications of Mundari Expressives and Other Reduplicated Structures (thesis)
More sentences with expressive
- The two sisters could hardly have been more different, one so boisterous and expressive, the other so taciturn and calm.From the entry taciturn
- We have observed on several occasions that the expressive resources afforded by superplurals would have useful applications.2021, Salvatore Florio, Øystein Linnebo, The Many and the One: A Philosophical Study of Plural Logic, Oxford University Press, page 174. From the entry superpluralism
- The show’s characters—and its titular hero specifically—are expressive enough to communicate a mood in a single frame.2018 November 27, tmc...@gmail.com, “SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg's legacy lives on in countless internet memes”, in…. From the entry memery
- Liberated from deep defensive duties Eden Hazard has become more expressive, more obviously, flashily complete.2017 May 13, Barney Ronay, “Antonio Conte’s brilliance has turned Chelsea’s pop-up team into champions”, in the Guardian. From the entry bloom
- These aspects of emotion—expressive behavior, physiological process—have parallels in the emotionlike behaviors of other species.2013, Mark Schaller, Jeffry A. Simpson, Douglas T. Kenrick, Evolution and Social Psychology, page 133. From the entry emotionlike
- "The results showed that women were significantly more facially expressive than men for all emotion clips."2012, Janet Shibley Hyde, Nicole Else-Quest, Half the Human Experience. From the entry facially
- Rachmaninov's closing gestures represent an array of structural and expressive responses to this 'endful-ness'.2010, Stephen Downes, Music and Decadence in European Modernism. From the entry endfulness
- Selvaganesh, whose specialty is the kanjira, a small hand drum with an expressive range of pitch.2009 May 1, Nate Chinen, “Bringing Along Friends Who Can Add to the Beat”, in New York Times. From the entry kanjira
- There are plenty of examples of droids apparently engaged in behaviors expressive of mental states and language.2005, Robert Arp, “‘If Droids Could Think …’: Droids as Slaves and Persons”, in Kevin S. Decker, Jason T. Eberl, editors, Star Wars and…. From the entry droid
- Hence , ushmā (or ushnatā) is an expressive equivalent for temperature.1965, Seminar on Technical and Scientific Translation, 15-17 April 1965. From the entry terminize
- Gerty's were of the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and dark expressive brows.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 13]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC. From the entry blue
- Philips wagged an expressive forefinger—the prisoner was not aware of that.1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 153. From the entry deceased
- Alfred Inglethorp that astute gentleman would have—in your so expressive idiom—‘smelt a rat’!1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 178. From the entry smell a rat
- Otherwise you′ll get ‘napooed,’ ” and he made an expressive gesture.1918, Roland Pertwee, The Little Landscape: Everybody′s Magazine, volume 38, page 35. From the entry napoo
- How expressive this little parenthesis: "Sakuntalâ makes a chiding gesture with her finger"!1903, Karl Mantzius, A History of Theatrical Art in Ancient and Modern Times, page 86. From the entry parenthesis
- According to Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the Authors Guild, this “blatantly commercial use of expressive authorship” comes as no surprise.2016 September 28, Richard Lea, quoting Mary Rasenberger, “Google swallows 11,000 novels to improve AI's conversation”, in The Guardian…. From the entry have seen this movie
- Max is an expressive huge-eyed black ball of kinetic kittenness who pops against each page’s bright, differently colored background.2015 October 9, Marjorie Ingall, “‘Leo: A Ghost Story,’ ‘Max the Brave’ and More”, in New York Times. From the entry kittenness
- An elephant's trunk was a marvel of elastofluidic engineering – a tool both supple and strong, sensitive and expressive.2015, Alastair Reynolds, Poseidon's Wake, →ISBN. From the entry elastofluidic
- Indeed, the American First Amendment has had a profound and lasting effect on expressive and religious liberties throughout the world.2014, Timothy Zick, “Exporting the First Amendment”, in The Cosmopolitan First Amendment: Protecting Transborder Expressive and Religious…. From the entry First Amendment
- What kept his devices from feeling larkish was a sly vocal intimation: even at his most weirdly expressive, Mr.2009 June 19, Nate Chinen, “Territory of Two Norwegian Trumpeters”, in New York Times. From the entry larkish
- Good tenmokus have an expressive depth and variation of colour.2004, Frank Hamer, The Potter's Dictionary of Materials and Techniques, page 358. From the entry tenmoku
- Receptive language is the phrases and vocabulary that we understand, whereas expressive language is what we actually use.2002, Penny Tassoni, Sheila Riddall-Leech, Diploma in Child Care and Education, Harcourt Heinemann, page 213…. From the entry expressive language
- The tale thus underscores in expressive form the semiparadoxical fact that traders can lie by telling the truth.1986, Richard Bauman, Story, Performance, and Event: Contextual Studies of Oral Narrative. From the entry underscore
- The transformation of expressive content from an undirected impulse into material for manipulation makes it palpable, exhibitable, saleable.1974, Theodor W. Adorno, “Small Sorrows, Great Songs”, in E. F. N. Jephcott, transl., Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life…. From the entry saleable
- GADTs are more expressive than regular variants, which helps you create types that more precisely match the shape of the program you want to write.2022, Anil Madhavapeddy, Yaron Minsky, Real World OCaml: Functional Programming for the Masses, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN. From the entry GADT
- Smith could easily be lumped in with expressive chanteuses like Norah Jones and Alicia Keys, but she has a broader palette than either.2006 September 7, Evan Serpick, “10 artists to watch 2006: The Noisettes, Jibbs, Silversun Pickups and seven other up-and-comers”, in…. From the entry chanteuse
- These mods, while usually having the distinctive bleep and beep quality of transistor-generated tones, are often astonishingly creative and rich in expressive nuances.2003, Rene T. A. Lysloff; Leslie C. Gay, Jr., Music and Technoculture, page 38. From the entry mod
- To review, the posters agreed that: 1) Tea is very pretty, with lovely, expressive eyes, 2) She has to be marked front and back.1997 May 14, Noah Singman, “David Duchovy married Tea Leoni!!???”, in rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc (Usenet), archived from the original on 15…. From the entry whatever butters your biscuits
- The expressive power of intonation in communication with preverbal infants was a topic of considerable interest in the early literature on language acquisition.1989, Anne Fernald, “Intonation and Communicative Intent in Mothers' Speech to Infants: Is the Melody the Message?”, in Child Development…. From the entry preverbal
- Singing their holiday concert from memory, the group sounded confident and expressive in pieces ranging from a medley of Barry Manilow songs to renaissance motets.1987 December 27, Frank K. Owen, “It's True What They Say About Choir Boys”, in Gay Community News, volume 15, number 24, page 7. From the entry motet
- This expressive, challenging and ambiguous over-production of the affectively, abundantly feminine is a characteristic of hagsploitation, which overlaps the seemingly barren and excluded with outright excess.2017, Erin Harrington, Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror, →ISBN. From the entry hagsploitation
- It is shown that antidomain semirings are more expressive than test semirings and that Kleene algebras with domain are more expressive than Kleene algebras with tests.2015, Georg Struth, “On the Expressive Power of Kleene Algebra with Domain”, in arXiv. From the entry antidomain
- Despite the length and interiority of many contemporaneous novels, their heteroglot dialogue was far more flexible and expressive of a much wider range of social classes and ethnic types.2013, Jeff Jaeckle, Film Dialogue, →ISBN, page 97. From the entry heteroglot
- While the expressive possibilities of Neoplasticism are limited to two dimensions (the plane), Elementarism realizes the possibility of plasticism in four dimensions, in the field of time-space.2013, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. From the entry plasticism
Meaning of expressive
- adjective Effectively conveying thought or feeling.
- adjective Conveying the speaker's emotions and/or attitudes, in addition to the denotative or literal meaning.
- adjective Able to represent a number of ideas or concepts.
Questions about expressive in a sentence
- How do you use expressive in a sentence?
- Expressive is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “A programming language that is Turing complete is more expressive than one that is not.”
- What is a short sentence with expressive?
- “a gesture expressive of the utmost contempt”
- What does expressive mean?
- Expressive means effectively conveying thought or feeling.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: expressive (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use expressive in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/expressive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
