ES Spanish · informal · 1 of 6
costar un ojo de la cara
exasperated, vivid
Word by word
cost · an · eye · of · the · face
Idiomatic sense
To be extremely expensive. The price is one eye out of the face. Tickets, repairs, rents, anything that feels out of scale.
Informal, and a complaint or a boast about what one paid. It is not a literal injury, and it is not a measured claim about value for money.
Examples
Esas entradas cuestan un ojo de la cara.
Those tickets cost a fortune.
Me costó un ojo de la cara, pero vale la pena.
It cost me an arm and a leg, and it was worth it.
Equivalents
Marks say how far the other phrase travels with this one. How to read them.
- near
Eyes of the head, against one eye of the face. Same figure, same complaint, wording not identical.
- near
to cost an arm and a leg
The English body spends limbs. The second example uses that phrase because the Spanish is doing that job.
- near
ein Vermögen kosten
To cost a fortune. Same force.
- near
目の玉が飛び出るほど高い
So expensive one's eyeballs pop out. A related bodily price, and a real Japanese figure. Not entered separately in this volume.
Notes
Un ojo de la cara is the set wording. Inventing the other eye, or moving it to the head to match the French, makes a different sentence. The closeness mark already says the two are near, not copies.
Sources
- Standard informal idiom. Wording is original.