costs
noun
Form of cost , plural of cost.
Simple meaning
Pecuniary reimbursement to the winning party for the expenses of litigation.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kahstsIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkɑsts
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Pecuniary reimbursement to the winning party for the expenses of litigation
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Pecuniary reimbursement to the winning party for the expenses of litigation
Used this way, costs is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a legal use: the wording is institutional and carries a defined meaning in law rather than a loose everyday one.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Law/legal
- Government/politics
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use costs
- “The total costs for the project were much higher than expected.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The total spent for goods or services including money and time and labor.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Regardless of the cost involved.
A periodic charge that does not vary with business volume (as insurance or rent or mortgage payments etc.).
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Inflation caused by an increase in the costs of production.
Ledger showing the accumulated costs classified in various ways.
The act of cutting costs.
An analysis of the cost effectiveness of different alternatives in order to see whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
Breaking down the costs of some operation and reporting on each factor separately.
Keeping account of the costs of items in production.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.