pearl of great price
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The expression has come to mean anything that is very valuable. For example, Hester Prynne, in The Scarlet Letter, who gave birth to a daughter following an act of adultery that destroyed her honor, named the child Pearl, because she had given up all that she had in bearing the child.
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.
A pearl of great price: the kind of love song that MAY be better than being in love itself, because it will never die, although, true, it may remind you of love that did die.
From Slate • Nov. 17, 2011
Yet last year we made $12,500,000, sustaining my maxim that 'Turnover is the pearl of great price in business.'
From Time Magazine Archive
The Chicago baseball franchise was no pearl of great price when Mr. Wrigley purchased it, and as recently as 1925 the club finished last in the league race.
From Time Magazine Archive
“That’s our pearl of great price; you know, without it, we’re nothing.”
From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez
From the beginning, I felt it, snug inside my heart, the pearl of great price.
From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez
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.
