An arm and a leg

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    这个短语的字面解释是“一只手臂和一条腿”，这是什么意思呢？请看对话：

    A: Happy to see you back in the neighborhood again. I hope you have fully recovered.

    B: I'm a lot better now, but I paid an arm and a leg for my surgery.

    Note: The idiom means a large, possibly exorbitant, amount of money. It is an American phrase coined sometime after WWII. "Arm" and "leg" are used as examples of items that no one would consider selling other than at an enormous price. It is a grim reality that, around that time, there were many news reports of servicemen who had lost an arm and a leg in the recent war. It is possible that the phrase originated in reference to the high cost paid by those who suffered such amputations. In French there is a similar saying: It costs the eyes from the head.