Meaning & use
pricy
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Meaning
adjectivecomparableinformal
Costing more than seems reasonable or than you want to pay.
Grammar: Used before a noun or after be: a pricy hotel; the hotel is pricy.
Patterns
- a bit pricy
- pricy for something
The restaurant was lovely but a little pricy for a weeknight dinner.
I liked the jacket, but it was too pricy for me.
Concert tickets have become pricy over the last few years.
Word forms
| comparative | pricier |
|---|---|
| superlative | priciest |
Common combinations
- a bit pricy
- The coffee is good, but it's a bit pricy.
- pricy neighborhood
- They moved out of the pricy neighborhood near the river.
- pricy gadget
- He saved for months to buy a pricy gadget.
- too pricy
- The trip was too pricy for our budget.
- pricier than
- Fresh herbs are pricier than dried ones.
Synonyms and how they differ
- expensive
- Expensive is neutral and works in any setting, while pricy is casual and often hints that the price feels a little too high.
- costly
- Costly is more formal and can also mean causing loss, as in a costly mistake.
- steep
- Steep is informal and stresses that a price is shockingly high.
- dear
- Dear is mainly British and a little old-fashioned in this sense.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: pricy or precious? pricy or pricey?
pricy vs precious
Precious means highly valued, not necessarily costly; it does not just mean expensive.
pricy vs pricey
Pricey is the same word with the more usual spelling.
Practice
We skipped dessert because the menu was pretty ___.
Choose one answer.
Pricy means expensive, which explains skipping dessert. Priceless means too valuable to price, and precious and prized do not describe a menu's cost.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “pricy”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.