Re: Dear
at a penny
Posted by R. Berg on February 01,
2002 In Reply to: Re: What one does need,
is dear a penny posted by Bruce Kahl on February 01, 2002
: : : : Hi everybody!
: : : : Pleased to meet you. I'm a Spanish free-lance
translator and I'm just happy that I've found you ;-)
: : : : I hope you can
help me with this sentence:
: : : : "Nothing is cheap which is superfluous,
for what one does need, is dear at a penny".
: : : : I think I've understood
its meaning (perhaps: superfluous things are always expensive; necessary things
are not). But I wonder if it is a phrase used in specific situations and even
if I have undestood it correctly.
: : : : Thanks in advance.
: : : : MARTA
:
: : Dear Marta,
: : : I have a different understanding of the phrase. I think
it means that nothing that isn't a necessity is can be considered cheap because
what one absolutely needs is expensive.
: : : Imagine an unemployed person
offered an ridiculously cheap price for a trip to Spain. Unfortunately because
this person can barely pay for the necessities, so it doesn't matter how inexpensive
the trip is, it can't be considered cheap.
: : : 'Dear' is used here in the
sense of expensive.
: : : I haven't heard the phrase used before. Where did
you find it?
: : I haven't heard this phrase either. The first part is easy
to understand. If you buy something useless at a reduced price,(like a ship in
the desert), it's not really a savings. You've wasted your money.
: : I'm having
trouble with the second part. If you really need something (like a heart transplant)
it is cheap at any price. But "what one does need, is dear at a penny" doesn't
say that to me. One of the meanings of "dear" is "expensive." ("Dictionary of
Word Origins: the Histories of More Than 8,000 English-Language Words" by John
Ayto; Arcade Publishing, New York, 1990). Something you really, really need wouldn't
be expensive at a penny.
: : R. Berg? Can you clear this up. I've muddied it
enough.
: "Nothing is cheap that is superfluous,
: for what one does not
need is dear at a penny."
: Mestrius Plutarchus a.k.a Plutarch (circa 45 -
125 A.D.)
: Another famous person said almost the same thing but in a different
way:
: "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
:
-- Albert Einstein
Aha! Thanks to Bruce for finding the original. We were all
having trouble making sense of the English sentence because it's illogical, and
I had just begun to wonder whether Marta was trying to translate something from
a book where the editor and proofreader had slipped up and a "not" was omitted:
"what one does not need is dear . . . "
- Re: Dear at a
penny R. Berg 02/01/02 (4)
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