for a song

For a very (and perhaps surprisingly) low price. Wow, I can't believe they let so many things at their yard sale go for a song. I would have marked up the prices a bit.

Fig. cheaply. (As if the singing of a song were payment. *Typically: buy something ~; get something ~; pick up someone ~.) No one else wanted it, so I picked it up for a song. I could buy this house for a song, because it's so ugly.

Very cheaply, for little money, especially for less than something is worth. For example, "I know a man ... sold a goodly manor for a song" (Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, 3:2). This idiom alludes to the pennies given to street singers or to the small cost of sheet music. [Late 1500s]

COMMON If you buy something for a song, you buy it for very little money. She was wearing a beautiful hat which she'd picked up for a song in Camden Market. She wore a lot of costume jewellery which she bought for a song off second-hand stalls. Note: You can also say that something goes for a song or is sold for a song, meaning that it is sold very cheaply. In the early nineties their shares went for a song. I know of good, solid, stone-built houses which have been sold by councils for a song. Note: This expression may be a reference to printed song sheets, which were very cheap. Alternatively, it may refer to small amounts of money that passers-by give to someone who is singing in the street.

At a low price: bought the antique tray for a song.

Something sold or bought for a trifling sum, by implication for far less than its worth. The expression is believed to come from the pennies given to itinerant songsters performing outside inns and public houses (bars), as well as the very small amount required to buy sheet music. The expression dates from the sixteenth century. Shakespeare used it in All’s Well That Ends Well (“I know a man . . . sold a goodly manor for a song” [3.2]). It was a cliché by the time Byron wrote, “The cost would be a trifle—an ‘old song’” (Don Juan, 1824).