Meaning & Analysis
To buy or sell something for a very low price, as if its value were equivalent to something as inexpensive and intangible as a simple song.
Insights
Gross Underestimation of Value
The phrase signifies a profound underestimation or disregard for an object's true worth. It implies a transaction where value is misjudged, often due to ignorance, desperation, or foolishness on the part of the seller.
Exploitative Transaction
It can symbolize an act of exploitation, where a knowledgeable buyer takes advantage of a vulnerable or uninformed seller to acquire assets at a fraction of their actual cost.
Tangible vs. Intangible Worth
The proverb highlights the folly of exchanging something of tangible, lasting worth (like land or goods) for something of fleeting, intangible pleasure (a song), serving as a cautionary tale against poor judgment.
Psychological Devaluation
Shakespeare's use of the phrase in 'All's Well That Ends Well'—'sold a goodly manor for a song' due to 'melancholy'—provides a profound psychological insight. It suggests that one's emotional state can drastically alter the perception of value, leading to irrational decisions where substantial, tangible assets are exchanged for fleeting, intangible satisfaction.
Historical Context of Value
Historically, a song was an ephemeral performance with no lasting monetary value before the age of recorded music. This makes it a perfect symbol for worthlessness in a transaction, contrasting the concrete value of property or goods with something transient and intangible.
Economic Exploitation
The proverb encapsulates the economic principle of asymmetrical information, where one party in a transaction has a significant advantage. The buyer who acquires something 'for a song' often exploits the seller's ignorance, desperation, or lack of appreciation for the item's true worth.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The 'song' serves as a potent metaphor for anything of negligible financial value, creating a powerful and universally understood symbol for a ridiculously low price.
Hyperbole
The expression uses exaggeration to emphasize the extreme disparity in the exchange of value. It is unlikely an item is literally traded for a single song, but the hyperbole effectively communicates the lopsided nature of the deal.
Idiom
The phrase is a classic idiom, where the collective meaning is figurative and not deducible from the literal definitions of the words, making it a memorable piece of cultural shorthand.
Transcription
Quotations
Selling him that for a song, which I have bought with so many affronts, and scraped together with such a deale of toyle.
She means he shall marrie her for a Song.
To have so little esteem of the outward meanes of salvation, as to part with them for a song as we say.
He is so wise as not to tell you for what. Haply he compounded for an old song.
To part with his Commodities for a bit of bread, for a song.
I bought it for a song.
Shakespeare Citations
I know a man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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