for a song
idiom

- very cheaply

- for a very small amount of money

Cambridge Dictionary, Merriam-Webster

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WORD ORIGIN

The phrase "for a song" first appeared in English literature around the 1500s-1600s. In Elizabethan England, ballads and songs were sold as broadsheets (single printed sheets) by street vendors for very small amounts—often just a penny or less. These were the cheapest form of entertainment and literature available. So buying something "for a song" meant paying as little as you'd pay for one of these throwaway ballad sheets.

The phrase appears in various forms in early modern English: Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well (c. 1602) includes the line: "I know a man... sold a goodly manor for a song”. By the 1600s, it had become a common expression in English.

There's a pleasant irony in the phrase—songs themselves can be quite valuable artistically and emotionally, yet they've historically required no payment to enjoy when sung aloud. This contrast between aesthetic value and monetary value makes the idiom particularly effective.

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GOING FOR A SONG

Alaska Purchase (1867)
The United States bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million—roughly 2 cents per acre for 586,412 square miles. Believing the land was useless frozen wilderness, critics called it "Seward's Folly" after Secretary of State William Seward who negotiated the deal. Today, Alaska's natural resources (oil, minerals, fisheries) are worth hundreds of billions, and its strategic military value during the Cold War proved incalculable. One of history's greatest real estate bargains.

The Declaration of Independence Copy (1991)
A man purchased a torn painting at a flea market for $4 because he liked the frame. When he dismantled it at home, he discovered an original 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence hidden behind the canvas—one of only 24 known surviving copies from the first printing. He sold it at auction in 1991 for $2.42 million. A classic "trash to treasure" story where someone literally bought a priceless historical document for the price of a coffee.

Jackson Pollock Painting (1992)
Teri Horton, a retired truck driver, bought a large, splatter-painted canvas from a thrift shop in California for $5 as a birthday gift for a friend. The friend couldn't fit it through their door, so Horton kept it. An art teacher later spotted it and suggested it might be a Jackson Pollock. Despite initial skepticism from art historians, forensic specialists found a fingerprint on the canvas that matched a print on a paint can in Pollock's studio.
Horton famously turned down an offer of $9 million for the painting, holding out for its full valuation of closer to $50 million.

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SYNONYMS

I GOT IT FOR A SONG, I got it for next to nothing, It was a bargain, It was a steal, I got it dirt cheap, it was a real buy, 

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation today, say something like:

“If you’re lucky you can buy valuable items FOR A SONG in second-hand shops and at boot sales.”

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