Impressive means so good or so grand that people admire it at once. An impressive building, an impressive performance, quite impressive.
It describes the effect on the viewer rather than any quality in the thing, which is why impressive and good are not the same: an impressive failure is possible. Very impressive said flatly is a common British way of saying the opposite. Note impress, the verb; impression, both the effect made and a mark pressed into a surface; and impressionable, meaning easily influenced, usually said of the young.
1adjectiveimpressiveSo good or grand that people admire it at once.
“It is an impressive building and nobody can afford to heat it.”
impressive is a quality of causing admiration.
Latin
impressus
Middle English
impressen
English
impress
English, today
impressive
Built from
From impress + -ive. impress comes from Middle English impressen, from Latin impressus. From Middle English impressen, from Latin impressus, perfect passive participle of imprimere (“to press into or upon, stick, stamp, or dig into”), from in (“in, upon”) + premere (“to press”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA