run for one's money

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

a run for one's money

1. (idiomatic) A difficult challenge for the person indicated, especially one involving a competitive situation.
   • 1908, G[ilbert] K[eith] Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, Bristol: J[ames] W[illiams] Arrowsmith, […]; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company Limited, →OCLC:

     Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf—kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now.

   • 1918, Peter B. Kyne, chapter 24, in The Valley of the Giants:

     "If your competitor regards you as a menace to his pocketbook, he can give you a nice little run for your money and delay you indefinitely."

   • 2003 April 3, Mitch Frank, “Why Primaries Matter”, in Time:

     After beating Bush in New Hampshire, McCain gave him a two month run for his money. Bush had to prove he wasn't just a famous name.

2. (idiomatic, dated) A reasonable opportunity to succeed, perform acceptably, or escape harm, especially in a difficult situation.
   • 1913, Rudyard Kipling, chapter 18, in Letters of Travel:

     He appealed and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case personally to the Court of Revision. Said, I believe, that he did not much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as man to man, he might have a run for his money.

   • 1917, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 11, in The Sheriff's Son:

     "I say he'll get a run for his money. If there's any killing to be done, it will be in fair fight."

• Usually preceded by the verb to give followed by a noun or pronoun which functions as an indirect object identifying the person(s) receiving the run for their money:

  We gave him a run for his money.

• have one's work cut out for one
• money's worth

• “Run for the money, to have a” in [John Camden Hotten], The Slang Dictionary […], 5th edition, London: Chatto and Windus, 1874, page 274.