buy (something) for a song

To purchase something for a very low price, especially when it is much lower than the thing is worth. The furniture company is having a liquidation sale at the moment, so I was able to buy this chest of drawers for a song. Wow, I can't believe they let so many people buy things from their yard sale for a song. I would have marked up the prices a bit. This computer used to be nearly $2,000 when it debuted a year ago, but you can buy it for a song now.

Something sold or bought for a trifling sum, by implication for far less than its worth. The expression is believed to come from the pennies given to itinerant songsters performing outside inns and public houses (bars), as well as the very small amount required to buy sheet music. The expression dates from the sixteenth century. Shakespeare used it in All’s Well That Ends Well (“I know a man . . . sold a goodly manor for a song” [3.2]). It was a cliché by the time Byron wrote, “The cost would be a trifle—an ‘old song’” (Don Juan, 1824).