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Cost   /kɑst/  /kɔst/   Listen
noun
Cost  n.  
1.
A rib; a side; a region or coast. (Obs.) "Betwixt the costs of a ship."
2.
(Her.) See Cottise.



Cost  n.  
1.
The amount paid, charged, or engaged to be paid, for anything bought or taken in barter; charge; expense; hence, whatever, as labor, self-denial, suffering, etc., is requisite to secure benefit. "One day shall crown the alliance on 't so please you, Here at my house, and at my proper cost." "At less cost of life than is often expended in a skirmish, (Charles V.) saved Europe from invasion."
2.
Loss of any kind; detriment; pain; suffering. "I know thy trains, Though dearly to my cost, thy gins and toils."
3.
pl. (Law) Expenses incurred in litigation. Note: Costs in actions or suits are either between attorney and client, being what are payable in every case to the attorney or counsel by his client whether he ultimately succeed or not, or between party and party, being those which the law gives, or the court in its discretion decrees, to the prevailing, against the losing, party.
Bill of costs. See under Bill.
Cost free, without outlay or expense. "Her duties being to talk French, and her privileges to live cost free and to gather scraps of knowledge."



verb
Cost  v. t.  (past & past part. costed; pres. part. costing)  
1.
To require to be given, expended, or laid out therefor, as in barter, purchase, acquisition, etc.; to cause the cost, expenditure, relinquishment, or loss of; as, the ticket cost a dollar; the effort cost his life. "A diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats." "Though it cost me ten nights' watchings."
2.
To require to be borne or suffered; to cause. "To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe."
To cost dear, to require or occasion a large outlay of money, or much labor, self-denial, suffering, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cost" Quotes from Famous Books



... set consider'ble by me, mother did, bein' the oldest; and I wouldn't miss makin' her last days happy, not if it cost me all the arms and legs I've got," said Joe, as he awkwardly struggled into the big boots an hour after leave to go home was ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... in the language. They have led to a vast amount of unnecessary buying. They have developed a talent for extravagance in our people. They have created a large and growing sisterhood and brotherhood of dead-beats. They have led to bankruptcy and slow pay and bad debts. They have raised the cost of everything we require because the tradesman compels us to pay his uncollected accounts. They are added to your bills and mine, and the merchant prince suffers no impairment of ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller

... this process can be repeated until the ballast is exhausted. The greatest height ever attained by aeronauts is the 7-1/4 miles, or 37,000 feet, of Messrs. Glaisher and Coxwell on September 5, 1862. The ascent nearly cost them their lives, for at an elevation of about 30,000 feet they were partly paralyzed by the rarefaction of the air, and had not Mr. Coxwell been able to pull the valve rope with his teeth and cause a descent, both would have died from want ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... was greater than ever. Never before had such a victory been won at such little cost. This night the village danced and sang, and Sitting Bull kept by himself, and accepted ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... perfectly useless undertaking, even for an army of fire-eaters, to offer battle to the irresistible heroes of our valley. In all this I of course acquiesced, and looked forward with no little interest to the return of the conquerors, whose victory I feared might not have been purchased without cost to themselves. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville


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