Impressive

How to spell impressive

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce impressive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does impressive mean?

1. adjectiveCommanding admiration through scale, skill, or quality.

Impressive in a sentence

• Her command of three languages is genuinely impressive.

• The new bridge is an impressive feat of engineering.

Where does impressive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb imprimere, meaning 'to press into' or 'to stamp upon', built from the prefix in- ('into') and premere ('to press'). The literal idea was of pressing a mark onto a surface, the same image that gives us 'imprint' and 'impression'. By the time it reached English through French in the 1500s, the sense had shifted from a physical stamp to a mental one: something that 'impresses' the mind leaves a strong mark there. The adjective 'impressive' was formed in English in the 1600s with the suffix -ive, meaning 'tending to', so it described anything tending to make a deep impression. The shared press root explains why the double 's' sits in the middle, the same way it does in 'press' and 'pressure', which is the spot writers most often second-guess.

How the word is built

• im- (in, into)
• press (from Latin premere: to press)
• -ive (adjective suffix, tending to)