on someone's dime
1
8.1
- idiom
- Informal
:
a expensas de alguien
- Maybe the person who owns that car with that bumper sticker has never, ever received anything on the taxpayers' dime.
Examples
-
I enjoyed a luxurious vacation on my friend's dime, which made it even more special.
-
But the idea of friends spending a birthday weekend in Miami on someone's parents' dime sounds a lot more reasonable when relayed generically like that instead of written as "Three Florida players were photographed in front of a yacht."
Blog text (17) -
You ain't going on my dime.
-
She took her unruly brood everywhere on Alaska's dime.
Blog text (17) -
He was able to take the course on his employer's dime, saving him a lot of money.
-
She traveled Europe on her grandfather's dime, exploring new cities without worrying about expenses.
Synonyms
Put on a person's account so they pay later
Surface Forms
Morphology
Given that 'on' + a possessive + 'dime' composes to 'on someone's coin/money', a B1 learner who knows 'dime' is a coin can plausibly infer the meaning 'paid for by someone else'. However, the expression is a culture-specific idiom using a U.S. coin and is conventionally used to mean 'at someone else's expense', so some learners may not predict the exact pragmatic use without exposure.
Etymology
The idiom on someone's dime may come from a time when a phone call or short taxi ride cost just a dime. If someone else put in the coin, the call or trip was literally 'on their dime', so the phrase now means 'at someone else's expense'.