Dictionary

for a song en · ADP

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Meanings

1. (idiomatic) For a very low price; very cheaply.
   • [T]he contents of aircraft that once commanded prices up to $148m are now being sold off for a song after being torn apart in Gloucestershire's aviation charnel house. 2009 December 11, “Jet Cemetery: Where Airplanes Go to Die”, in Businessweek:
   • He bought it for a song in 1984 compared with what his fellow financiers were spending on tonier Park and Fifth Avenues. 2013 August 16, Robin Finn, “A Former Madoff Penthouse Goes Back on the Market”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
   • They remembered then that they could have bought for a song canvases which now were worth large sums. 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 48, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:
   • In his senior year, he had run across an old '66 Chevy Super Sport headed for the junkyard, bought it for a song, and overhauled it with his dad's help, turning it into the big red muscle car it was back in its day. 2011, Kat Martin, A Song for My Mother, Vanguard Press,, →ISBN, page 200:

Forms

Relateds

old song

Translations (12)

nl voor een habbekrats (very cheaply) · pl za półdarmo (very cheaply) · fr pour une bouchée de pain (very cheaply) · de für einen Apfel und ein Ei (very cheaply) · fr pour trois fois rien (very cheaply) · el φθηνά (very cheaply) · pl za grosze (very cheaply) · ru за бесценок (very cheaply) · es de balde (very cheaply) · fi pilkkahintaan (very cheaply) · pl za bezcen (very cheaply) · el τζάμπα (very cheaply)