Re: Dear
at a penny - cheap at half the price
Posted
by Word Camel on February 01, 2002 In Reply to: Re:
Dear at a penny posted by R. Berg 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 . . . "
: This time the emperor was naked,
and trying to count the stripes on his necktie was a waste of effort. Anyway,
it'd be something like "lo que no se necesita es caro a uno centavo." Perdóneme;
hace muchos aņos desde estoy en la escuela.
We are a fine bunch. Our services
would be dear at a penny, though I enjoyed the laugh.
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