hire-purchase system
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of hire-purchase system
First recorded in 1895–1900
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
If this is the "hire-purchase system," a piano-less life is infinitely preferable to braving its manifold perils and penalties.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, April 25, 1891 by Various
No: I have that on the hire-purchase system.
From You Never Can Tell by Bernard Shaw
She managed secretly to save enough money to surprise and delight Olivier with a hired piano, which, on the hire-purchase system became their property at the end of a certain number of months.
From Jean Christophe: in Paris The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House by Gilbert Cannan
To-day he had successfully prosecuted a man who seemed to have lived for some time on the hire-purchase system, and it made him unusually cheerful.
From In the Year of Jubilee by George Gissing
He took the young man round to a neighbouring costumier’s, and secured a dress-suit on the hire-purchase system, at a very small outlay of ready money which he advanced.
From The Intriguers by William Le Queux
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.
