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extremely expensive; costing a large amount of money
The concert tickets cost an arm and a leg, but it was worth it.
The concert tickets were very expensive, but they were enjoyable.
I’d love to buy that car, but it’ll cost me an arm and a leg.
I’d love to buy that car, but it’s too expensive for me.
Used to emphasize that something is prohibitively costly, often in a negative or frustrated tone.
Use this idiom when something is so expensive that it feels like a personal sacrifice to afford it. It’s often used in contexts like luxury items, medical bills, or unexpected costs.
Never use this phrase to describe physical injuries or actual body parts. It is always about money.
The phrase likely originated in the early 20th century, possibly from the idea of losing valuable body parts (e.g., in war or accidents) as a metaphor for extreme sacrifice or cost. By the 1940s–1950s, it evolved into its modern figurative meaning of high expense.
This idiom is always used figuratively to describe monetary cost, never in a literal sense. It is common in spoken English but rarely used in formal writing.