to put a price on someone's head
1
9.3
- idiom
- Offensive
:
ofrecer una recompensa por la cabeza de alguien
- Local authorities warned him that someone had put a price on his head due to his whistleblowing.
Examples
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The British had a price on his head, and then the Free State government put a price on his head, and he came here.
Fiction book (1994) -
So we put a price on her head.
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Then when he makes himself president, his first official business was to put a price on my head.
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What is certain is that your government has put a price on her head and these bounty hunters are out to collect it.
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Quilok then put a price on his head and Alodor fled, never to be heard from again.
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The rival gang put a price on his head, hoping to eliminate him for good.
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After he betrayed his allies, a powerful criminal organization put a price on his head.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
put + a + price + on + someone's + head
The phrase literally combines 'put' + 'price' + 'on' + 'someone's head', so a learner who knows those words can plausibly infer that a monetary value is being assigned to a person (a bounty). However, the conventionalized sense—offering a reward specifically for capture or killing—is an idiomatic extension of that literal image and is not fully predictable without prior exposure. Because the parts point toward the general idea but the precise criminal/bounty sense is conventionalized, this is best judged as partially transparent.
Etymology
The phrase put a price on someone's head comes from old 'wanted' posters or reward notices, where people wrote a price (money) for a criminal and showed it with the person's name or picture. That's why it now means 'to offer a reward for the capture or killing of a person'.