price

English

Alternative forms

• prize (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English price (“price, prize, value, excellence”), borrowed from Old French pris, preis, from Latin pretium (“worth, price, money spent, wages, reward”); compare praise, precious, appraise, appreciate, depreciate, etc.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -aɪs
• (UK, US): enPR: prīs, IPA^(key): /pɹaɪs/
• (Canadian raising): IPA^(key): /pɹʌɪs/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (UK)

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Noun

price (plural prices)

1. The cost required to gain possession of something.
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     We can afford no more at such a price.

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter III, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     My hopes wa'n't disappointed. I never saw clams thicker than they was along them inshore flats. I filled my dreener in no time, and then it come to me that 'twouldn't be a bad idee to get a lot more, take 'em with me to Wellmouth, and peddle 'em out. Clams was fairly scarce over that side of the bay and ought to fetch a fair price.

2. The cost of an action or deed.

   I paid a high price for my folly.

3. Value; estimation; excellence; worth.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Proverbs xxxi:10:

     Her price is far above rubies.

   • 1827, [John Keble], The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), Oxford, Oxfordshire: y W. Baxter, for J. Parker; and C and J Rivington, , →OCLC:

     new treasures still, of countless price

Quotations

• 1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn‎:

  It is difficult otherwise to explain the contradictions of [Chamberlain’s] policy, his failure to grasp any of the courses that were open to him. Like the mass of the people, he did not want to pay the price either of peace or of war.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Irish: praghas

Translations

Verb

price (third-person singular simple present prices, present participle pricing, simple past and past participle priced)

1. (transitive) To determine the monetary value of (an item); to put a price on.
2. (transitive, obsolete) To pay the price of; to make reparation for.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     Thou damned wight, / The author of this fact, we here behold, / What iustice can but iudge against thee right, / With thine owne bloud to price his bloud, here shed in sight.

3. (transitive, obsolete) To set a price on; to value; to prize.
4. (transitive, colloquial, dated) To ask the price of.

   to price eggs

Derived terms

• budget-priced

Translations

Further reading

• “price”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “price”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• Cripe, recip.

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from Old Church Slavonic притъча (pritŭča).

Noun

price f (plural prici)

1. (dated) disagreement, argument

Declension