Meaning
A genuine challenge, contest or measure of value for what one has staked, spent or invested. To give someone a run for their money is to push a stronger rival hard enough that they must truly earn the win; to get or have a run for one's money is to receive a fair fight or full value for one's money or effort, even in defeat. Almost always embedded in the frames give, get or have a run for one's money. Often said of honorable losers: the phrase credits the loser with making the winner work, and it can also mean simply getting one's money's worth of excitement or value. Regional use: British horse-racing origin; now used throughout the English-speaking world.
Origin
Victorian British horse racing, seen from the bettor's side. The Phrase Finder page, verified directly, records that the OED dates the literal racing sense to the late 1830s: a successful run by a horse one had backed, especially one that had looked likely to be scratched, so the backer at least got a run for his money. The earliest print use cited there is 1856, in the Sporting Review. The earliest recorded figurative use is 1874, in the revision of Hotten's Slang Dictionary, which glosses the betting sense and extends it to a good determined struggle for anything - verified on the fetched page. Later dated uses show the spread: Punch in 1887, Chesterton in 1908, and Joyce's Ulysses (1922), where a mounted policeman got a run for his money. The giver sense, the plucky challenger, and the getter sense, the unrewarded but not cheated punter, settled by the early twentieth century.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- get a run for one's money
- have a run for one's money
Usage Examples
- Nobody expected the rookie to win, but she gave the champion a run for his money before falling in the fifth set.
- The hotel was no resort, but at forty dollars a night by the sea we felt we had got a run for our money.
- Startup after startup has tried to challenge the search giant, and a few have genuinely given it a run for its money.