price on someone's head
1
7.7
- idiom
- NSFW
:
precio por su cabeza
- He ended up on their top-ten most-wanted list with a price on his head.
Examples
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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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Rollo's got a price on his head and is running for his life.
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So we put a price on her head.
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You said there was a price on his head?
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The price on his head is too great now.
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There is not a man there without a price on his head.
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Your brother's got a price on his head and you talk to him like that?
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A man with a price on his head shouldn't ride the subway.
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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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The police have announced a substantial price on his head to capture the escaped fugitive.
Synonyms
147
5.5
A payment given for doing something such as catching a criminal
47
8.2
Money offered for catching a criminal
1
7.6
Money offered to people who give information to catch a killer
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase literally combines 'price' (money) with a locative link to a person ('on someone's head'), so a learner can infer a monetary sum is attached to that person. However the specific convention that this means a reward or bounty for capturing/killing someone is idiomatic and culturally specific, so the exact sense is only partially predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Price on someone's head may come from old times when towns or rulers put a money price on a criminal and sometimes asked for the criminal's head as proof of capture. Hunters would bring the person or proof to claim the money, so the image of money on a person's head came to mean 'a reward for catching or killing someone'.