Word.ws English Dictionary

why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free

why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free proverb: do not expect somebody to make a costly commitment if it will give them nothing they do not already have; used especially as a warning against having sexual intercourse before marriage (or conversely, as encouragement against getting married).

Proverb

why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

  1. Do not expect somebody to make a costly commitment if it will give them nothing they do not already have; used especially as a warning against having sexual intercourse before marriage (or conversely, as encouragement against getting married).
    • The whole idea of why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free relates to offering only a very brief sample of your music online. I have intellectual property, and I treat that intellectual property very seriously as an artist.2005, Steven Gordon, The Future of the Music Business
    • In the past, women who wanted to move in with a boyfriend would get a strict talking-to about a common male mentality: “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”2007, Elina Furman, Kiss and Run

Questions about why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free

What does why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free mean?
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free means do not expect somebody to make a costly commitment if it will give them nothing they do not already have; used especially as a warning against having sexual intercourse before marriage (or conversely, as encouragement against getting married).
What part of speech is why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free is a proverb.

Words near why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free in the dictionary

  1. why am I not surprised
  2. why and wherefore
  3. why aye
  4. why buy a book when you can join a library
  5. why buy a book when you can join the library
  6. why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free
  7. why come
  8. why for
  9. why God invented
  10. why in God's name
  11. why in the world

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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