an arm and a leg
Pluralarms and legs
- 1A very high price; an amount of money that seems far too much to pay for an item or service.
The repairs ended up costing an arm and a leg, far more than the original quote.
Collectors will happily pay an arm and a leg for a clean first-edition print.
Similarfortune, bundle, packet, mint
Oppositepittance
Note
A piece of hyperbole that sits as the object of a money verb: it most often follows cost, though charge, pay and spend take it as well. It works just as naturally in the negative, as when The New York Times in 1960 praised gold bangles that "do not cost an arm and a leg." Pretty penny names the same large sum, but the body-part image here makes the expense sound like a sacrifice.
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