different between convey vs expressive

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French conveier (French French convoyer), from Vulgar Latin *convio, from Classical Latin via (“way”). Compare convoy.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?n?ve?/
• Rhymes: -e?

Verb

convey (third-person singular simple present conveys, present participle conveying, simple past and past participle conveyed)

1. To move (something) from one place to another.
   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, 1 Kings 5:8-9,^[1]

     […] I will do all thy desire concerning timber of cedar, and concerning timber of fir. My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats unto the place that thou shalt appoint me, and will cause them to be discharged there […]

   • 1858, Henry Gray, London: John W. Parker & Son, “Female Organs of Generation,” p. 688,^[2]

     The Fallopian Tubes, or oviducts, convey the ova from the ovaries to the cavity of the uterus.
2. (dated) To take or carry (someone) from one place to another.
   • c. 1595, William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act II, Scene 1,^[3]

     Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:

     Love they to live that love and honour have.

   • 1717, Samuel Croxall (translator), Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books, Translated by the Most Eminent Hands, London: Jacob Tonson, Book the Sixth, p. 200,^[4]

     […] the false Tyrant seiz’d the Princely Maid,

     And to a Lodge in distant Woods convey’d;

   • 1817, Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 19,^[5]

     It began to rain, not much, but enough to make shelter desirable for women, and quite enough to make it very desirable for Miss Elliot to have the advantage of being conveyed home in Lady Dalrymple’s carriage, which was seen waiting at a little distance […]

3. To communicate; to make known; to portray.
   • 1690, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, London: Thomas Basset, Book III, Chapter 9, p. 232,^[6]

     To make Words serviceable to the end of Communication is necessary […] that they excite, in the Hearer, exactly the same Idea they stand for, in the Mind of the Speaker: Without this, Men fill one another’s Heads with noise and sounds; but convey not thereby their Thoughts, and lay not before one another their Ideas, which is the end of Discourse and Language.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Dublin: John Smith, Volume 2, Book 7, Chapter 6, p. 27,^[7]

     This excellent Method of conveying a Falshood with the Heart only, without making the Tongue guilty of an Untruth, by the Means of Equivocation and Imposture, hath quieted the Conscience of many a notable Deceiver […]

   • 1895, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, Chapter 3,^[8]

     I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling.

   • 1927, Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Chapter 1,^[9]

     To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch.

4. (law) To transfer legal rights (to).

   He conveyed ownership of the company to his daughter.

   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, Dublin, The Hibernia Press, 1809, p. 42,^[10]

     […] before his breaking forth into open rebellion, [the Earle of Desmond] had conveyed secretly all his lands to feoffees of trust, in hope to have cut off her Maiestie from the escheate of his lands.

5. (obsolete) To manage with privacy; to carry out.
   • 1557, uncredited translator, A Mery Dialogue by Erasmus, London: Antony Kytson,^[11]

     I shall so conuey my matters, that he shall dysclose all together hym selfe, what busynesse is betwene you […]

   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act I, Scene 2,^[12]

     I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal.

6. (obsolete) To carry or take away secretly; to steal; to thieve.
   • 1592, Robert Greene, A Disputation betweene a Hee Conny-Catcher and a Shee Conny-Catcher, London: T. Gubbin,

     Suppose you are good at the lift, who be more cunning then we women, in that we are more trusted, for they little suspect vs, and we haue as close conueyance as you men, though you haue Cloakes, we haue skirts of gownes, handbaskets, the crownes of our hattes, our plackardes, and for a need, false bagges vnder our smockes, wherein we can conuey more closely then you.

Synonyms

• (to move something from one place to another): carry, transport
• (to take someone from one place to another): accompany, conduct (archaic), escort
• (to communicate a message): express, send, relay

Derived terms

Related terms

• convoy

Translations

English

Etymology

From Middle French expressif

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?k?sp??s?v/
• Rhymes: -?s?v
• Hyphenation: ex?pres?sive

Adjective

expressive (comparative more expressive, superlative most expressive)

1. Effectively conveying thought or feeling.

Antonyms

• inexpressive
• unexpressive

Derived terms

• expressiveness

Related terms

• expressivity

Translations

Noun

expressive (plural expressives)

1. (linguistics) Any word or phrase that expresses (that the speaker, writer, or signer has) a certain attitude toward or information about the referent.
   • 2017, Tammi Leann Stout, An investigation of projection and temporal referencein Kaqchikel (dissertation for the University of Texas at Austin):

     Consider the case of expressives, where no prior knowledge of the speaker’s attitudes are required to interpret the utterance. In (43) ["That jerk Alexa keeps making me look bad"], Steve does not need to know (and in fact has no prior knowledge of) anything relating to Siri’s attitudes towards Alexa to interpret that Siri has a negative attitude about Alexa. It is the expressive that jerk that implies the negative attitude.

2. (linguistics, more narrowly) A word or phrase, belonging to a distinct word class or having distinct morphosyntactic properties, with semantic symbolism (for example, an onomatopoeia), variously considered either a synonym, a hypernym or a hyponym of ideophone.
   • 2004, Nicole Kruspe, A Grammar of Semelai (?ISBN), page 396:

     Cross-linguistically 'expressives' are more commonly termed 'ideophones' [...] Expressives are often cited as a distinctive shared feature of the Austroasiatic language family (Diffloth and Zide 1992; Osada 1992 (Mundari); Svantesson 1983 (Kammu)). [...] I do not make a distinction between expressives and ideophones. [...] I distinguish expressives from onomatopoeic forms, although the two probably overlap.

   • 2007, N. J. Enfield, A Grammar of Lao (?ISBN), page 299

     A native metalinguistic term toongl-toojl covers most of these, capturing a range of phenomena associated with alliterative, sound symbolic, and poetic expression. This chapter describes expressive structures under the headings ideophones, onomatopoeia, four-syllable rhyming expressions, echo formation, and interjections.

     12.1 Ideophones

     The term ideophone is roughly equivalent to the term expressive, as well as other terms mimetic and psychomime.

   • 2015, The Munda Languages (Gregory D. S. Anderson, ?ISBN), page 139:

     The term 'expressive' was suggested by Diffloth (1976:263–264) and adopted by Emeneau (1980:7) in the South Asian context in the following:

     ‘(E)xpressive’ is the most inclusive term for a form class with semantic symbolism and distinct morphosyntactic properties; ‘ideophones’ are a subclass in which the symbolism is phonological; ‘onomaptoetics’ are ideophones in which the reference of the symbolism is acoustic (i.e. imitative of sounds). Since the ideophones may have reference not only to sounds, but to any other objects of sense, including internal feelings as well as external perceptions (sight, taste, smell, etc.), and since the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian items already examined have this very wide type of reference, the broadest term ‘expressives’ seems appropriate.

   • 2017, Sam Gray, Classifications of Mundari Expressives and Other Reduplicated Structures (thesis):

     I examine the valency of expressives, a class of ideophones in Mundari, comparing their behaviors as predicates to those of reduplicated verb forms.

Further reading

• expressive in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• expressive in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

French

Adjective

expressive

1. feminine singular of expressif

German

Adjective

expressive

1. inflection of expressiv:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular