the sum or amount of money or its equivalent for which anything is bought, sold, or offered for sale.
a sum offered for the capture of a person alive or dead.
The authorities put a price on his head.
the sum of money, or other consideration, for which a person's support, consent, etc., may be obtained, especially in cases involving sacrifice of integrity.
They claimed that every politician has a price.
that which must be given, done, or undergone in order to obtain a thing.
He gained the victory, but at a heavy price.
odds.
Archaic. value or worth.
Archaic. great value or worth (usually preceded byof ).
to fix the price of.
to ask or determine the price of.
We spent the day pricing furniture at various stores.
at any price, at any cost, no matter how great.
Their orders were to capture the town at any price.
beyond / without price, of incalculable value; priceless.
The crown jewels are beyond price.
Bruce, 1845–1903, U.S. architect.
(Edward) Reynolds, 1933–2011, U.S. novelist.
(Mary) Leontyne born 1927, U.S. soprano.
a male given name.
the sum in money or goods for which anything is or may be bought or sold
the cost at which anything is obtained
the cost of bribing a person
a sum of money offered or given as a reward for a capture or killing
value or worth, esp high worth
gambling another word for odds
whatever the price or cost
at a high price
invaluable or priceless
what someone deserves, esp a fitting punishment
it's just the price of him
what are the chances of something happening now?
to fix or establish the price of
to ascertain or discover the price of
to charge so highly for as to prevent the sale, hire, etc, of
Price, charge, cost, expense refer to outlay or expenditure required in buying or maintaining something. Price is used mainly of single, concrete objects offered for sale; charge, of services: What is the price of that coat? There is a small charge for mailing packages. Cost is mainly a purely objective term, often used in financial calculations: The cost of building a new annex was estimated at $10,000. Expense suggests cost plus incidental expenditure: The expense of the journey was more than the contemplated cost. Only charge is not used figuratively. Price, cost, and sometimes expense may be used to refer to the expenditure of mental energy, what one “pays” in anxiety, suffering, etc.
First recorded in 1175–1225; (noun) Middle English pris(e), from Old French, Latin pretium “price, value, worth” ( cf. precious); (verb) late Middle English prisen, from Middle French prisier, derivative of pris, Old French as above; see prize 2, praise
The price of something is how much it costs. It’s usually money, but sometimes not. For example, the price of staying up all night is that you’re really sleepy the next day. Wake up! You can use the noun price to mean the money exchanged for an item or service — or use it figuratively, to mean "something negative that's required in exchange for something positive." If you hear the phrase "a small price to pay," think of this figurative meaning. You could say, for example, that having clouds of pet hair all over your house is a small price to pay for your wonderful cat.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Neither Santander bank nor the Zambrano family has revealed the purchase price.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
For context, about 26% of homes in the U.S. that are listed for sale had a price cut.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 14, 2026
Stock futures were mostly lower as traders mull bank earnings and await U.S. consumer price index data.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
Its holding is worth about $115 million at the current stock price — peanuts for a company that collects revenue of about $5 billion a year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
I knew he was going to drop the price of mutton sooner or later, so I paced here and there as I waited, and I did a bit of eavesdropping.
From "The Detective's Assistant" by Kate Hannigan
Price targets can get awkward, even for companies that went public decades ago.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
Price targets run the gamut, and not all of them imply extreme upside potential.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 7, 2026
Cody Price "hadn't really thought about" Border Patrol, he says, until he spotted the half-dozen recruiters.
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026
Two Latinos are running in this year’s election to replace Councilmember Curren Price, who is Black and retiring after serving the maximum three terms.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 4, 2026
I would be myself, Leah Price, eager to learn all there is to know.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
But Deutsche Bank analyst Janardan Menon specifically asked about rising dynamic random-access memory prices — and the fact that Ericsson’s Chinese equipment rivals can source memory chips from Chinese suppliers at lower costs.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 14, 2026
The net percent of owners raising average selling prices rose from May, the fourth consecutive month that actual price increases have risen, marking the highest level since January 2023.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
Homeowners in Raleigh, N.C., were the most likely to cut prices on their for-sale listings, followed by homeowners in Denver and Salt Lake City.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 14, 2026
But investors’ attention will likely drift Tuesday, at least temporarily, to a flood of bank earnings and the latest reading of U.S. consumer prices.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
Between the purchase of the loans and the sale of the bonds made up of those loans, his group was exposed to falling prices.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
The unleaded fuel there was priced at 146.7p per litre on Tuesday, more than 5p cheaper than at another station a mile away.
From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2026
Tickets for her event are $150 and a spot in the “7 Paintings” dining room runs $175, priced on par with a number of city’s most acclaimed restaurants.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
With refiners able to source competitively priced oil on the spot market, demand for additional term volumes might remain limited.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
So Amazon appears attractively priced based on these figures.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 7, 2026
“We’ll go into town to see if there is any decently priced ube in the market. I know Father Amadi likes ube, and we have some com at home to go with it.”
From "Purple Hibiscus" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A dislocation in pricing then, can and probably will persist.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 13, 2026
American roadsides and strip malls are stocked with retailers offering competitive pricing and an aversion to soft lighting.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026
"Oil's return towards pre-war levels in June reflected markets pricing in a best-case outcome for the fragile US-Iran arrangement," she wrote, adding that the "re-escalation exposes how fragile that assumption was".
From Barron's ● Jul. 13, 2026
The report's authors found the single largest driver of the so-called poverty premium was food shopping, with 39% of families forced to rely on local convenience stores instead of larger supermarkets with more competitive pricing.
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2026
Looking into it a bit, Jamie found that the model used by Wall Street to price LEAPs, the Black-Scholes option pricing model, made some strange assumptions.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
