Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Purchased at a high price: as, dear-bought experience; “dear-bought blessings,”

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Bought at a high price.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • “You will observe, Sir,” Morris summed up, that “we set out in this war without arms, ammunition, clothing or stores of any kind, without money or credit except with our own people, that despising the practices of the most experienced Nations, We determined to pursue the purest principles of Economy in our own way, until we have by dear-bought experience learned that we knew almost nothing about the matter.”

    Robert Morris Charles Rappleye 2010

  • “You will observe, Sir,” Morris summed up, that “we set out in this war without arms, ammunition, clothing or stores of any kind, without money or credit except with our own people, that despising the practices of the most experienced Nations, We determined to pursue the purest principles of Economy in our own way, until we have by dear-bought experience learned that we knew almost nothing about the matter.”

    Robert Morris Charles Rappleye 2010

  • He answered and said, “Let there be peace betwixt us; I will atone for thy brethren with gold and dear-bought things, even as thy heart may wish.”

    The Story of the Volsungs 2008

  • And moreover their women are for ever seeking whatso is fair and goodly, whatso is far-fetched and dear-bought, whereof we chapmen also thrive, as thou mayst well deem.

    The Water of the Wondrous Isles 2007

  • And let men make ever such strong pretensions to knowledge, from their far-fetched and dear-bought experience, cannot a penetrating spirit learn as much from the passions of a Sir Hargrave Pollexfen in England, as it could from a man of the same or the like ill qualities, in Spain, in

    Sir Charles Grandison 2006

  • I would think too of that other war which is as old as mankind, and is indeed the life of man: the unsparing war, the grinding slavery of competition; the toil of seventy years, dear-bought bread, precarious honour, the perils and pitfalls, and the poor rewards.

    Memories and Portraits 2005

  • Sleep, however, at length got the better of all resistance; and now as if he had already been a deity, as the antients imagined, and an offended one too, he seemed to enjoy his dear-bought conquest. —

    The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling 2004

  • When I returned with my dear-bought honours, purchased by toil and blood, I found her wedded to a

    Ivanhoe 2004

  • Turkish slavery, and the restoration of dear-bought liberty; tombs and cenotaphs were strewed thick around, adorned by ever renewing vegetation; the mighty dead hovered over their monuments, and beheld in our enthusiasm and congregated numbers a renewal of the scenes in which they had been the actors.

    The Last Man 2003

  • And little they mourned when they had hastily haled it out, dear-bought treasure!

    Beowulf, translated by Francis Gummere 2003

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