"price on someone's head" meaning in English

See price on someone's head in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-price on one's head.ogg [Australia]
Etymology: From the earlier punishment of beheading criminals. The usage of this idiom began in the mid-1700s. Head templates: {{en-noun|?}} price on someone's head
  1. (idiomatic) A compensation for capturing or killing someone, especially a criminal. Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-price_on_someone's_head-en-noun-8fWVlnEa Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for price on someone's head meaning in English (1.6kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the earlier punishment of beheading criminals. The usage of this idiom began in the mid-1700s.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "?"
      },
      "expansion": "price on someone's head",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The police put a price on his head after he killed four innocent women.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 February 6, Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary, archived from the original on 2023-12-07",
          "text": "\"The price on our respective heads has more zeros in it than Pearl Harbor in 1941. Certainly there are safer places to 'get out.'\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A compensation for capturing or killing someone, especially a criminal."
      ],
      "id": "en-price_on_someone's_head-en-noun-8fWVlnEa",
      "links": [
        [
          "compensation",
          "compensation"
        ],
        [
          "capturing",
          "capture"
        ],
        [
          "kill",
          "kill"
        ],
        [
          "criminal",
          "criminal"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A compensation for capturing or killing someone, especially a criminal."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-price on one's head.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/eb/En-au-price_on_one%27s_head.ogg/En-au-price_on_one%27s_head.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/En-au-price_on_one%27s_head.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "price on someone's head"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the earlier punishment of beheading criminals. The usage of this idiom began in the mid-1700s.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "?"
      },
      "expansion": "price on someone's head",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English nouns with unknown or uncertain plurals",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The police put a price on his head after he killed four innocent women.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 February 6, Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary, archived from the original on 2023-12-07",
          "text": "\"The price on our respective heads has more zeros in it than Pearl Harbor in 1941. Certainly there are safer places to 'get out.'\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A compensation for capturing or killing someone, especially a criminal."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "compensation",
          "compensation"
        ],
        [
          "capturing",
          "capture"
        ],
        [
          "kill",
          "kill"
        ],
        [
          "criminal",
          "criminal"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A compensation for capturing or killing someone, especially a criminal."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-price on one's head.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/eb/En-au-price_on_one%27s_head.ogg/En-au-price_on_one%27s_head.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/En-au-price_on_one%27s_head.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "price on someone's head"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.