“Intensive” means something that involves a high level of effort, concentration, or detail, often in a limited time or focused area.

Core meaning

  • Intensive describes an action or process that is very thorough, concentrated, or demanding, rather than casual or spread out.
  • It often implies great effort in a short period, like an intensive course or intensive training.

Common everyday uses

  • Education: “An intensive course” = a class that meets frequently and requires a lot of work in a short time.
  • Work/study: “Intensive research” or “intensive study” = very focused, detailed work on a topic.
  • Medicine: “Intensive care unit (ICU)” = a hospital area where very sick patients receive very close, continuous attention.

More precise dictionary sense

  • Very great effort or work: e.g., intensive effort, intensive training.
  • Highly concentrated or thorough: focused deeply on one thing rather than spread over many.
  • In grammar, “intensive” can also describe a word that adds extra emphasis (like “really” or “absolutely”), though this use is less common in everyday speech.

Quick test for usage

You are probably using intensive correctly if:

  1. It involves a lot of effort or attention.
  1. It feels concentrated into a short time or focused area.
  1. You could swap it with “very demanding” or “highly focused” and the sentence still makes sense.

Bottom note: Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.