Full of expense or cost; involving a lot of money to do or maintain.
From 'expense' (from Latin 'expensa,' past participle of 'expendere' meaning to weigh out or spend) plus the suffix '-ful' (Old English origin meaning full of). The word combines medieval financial terminology with Germanic morphology.
This word is actually quite rare in modern English—we usually say 'expensive' instead! It shows how English constantly creates new words by adding suffixes, even when simpler alternatives already exist. Language is like a toolkit where we sometimes forge new tools even when we have perfectly good ones.
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