for a song

English

Alternative forms

• for a song and a dance

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Prepositional phrase

for a song

1. (idiomatic) For a very low price; very cheaply.
   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 48, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:

     They remembered then that they could have bought for a song canvases which now were worth large sums.

   • 2009 December 11, “Jet Cemetery: Where Airplanes Go to Die”, in Businessweek‎^[1]:

     [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.

   • 2011, Kat Martin, A Song for My Mother, Vanguard Press,, →ISBN, page 200:

     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.

   • 2013 August 16, Robin Finn, “A Former Madoff Penthouse Goes Back on the Market”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN:

     He bought it for a song in 1984 compared with what his fellow financiers were spending on tonier Park and Fifth Avenues.

Usage notes

• Frequently preceded by a form of the verb to buy or to sell.

Translations

very cheaply

• Dutch: voor een habbekrats
• Finnish: pilkkahintaan
• French: pour trois fois rien (literally “for three times nothing”), pour une bouchée de pain (literally “for a piece of bread”)
• German: für einen Apfel und ein Ei (literally “for an apple and an egg”)
• Greek: τζάμπα (el) (tzámpa), φθηνά (el) (fthiná)
• Polish: za bezcen (pl), za grosze (pl), za półdarmo
• Spanish: de balde