Kiss me for 100 dollars? [closed]

It depends on the context.

"Would you X for $100?" could mean you get $100, as compensation for your efforts, to do X. For example, "Would you mow the lawn for $100?"

It could also mean you pay $100, as compensation for a benefit you receive, where you get to do X. For example, "Would you eat as much as you want in your favorite restaurant for $100?"

In your example, though, it is somewhat ambiguous, as it's not clear if the girl and guy have the same understanding of the meaning of the kiss. Is it something the guy couldn't care less about doing, and have to be offered compensation to do? That would be A. Or it is something he would like to do and might be willing to pay for it? That would be B.

You would assume that the person asking the question is offering the money. If the person asking the question wanted to receive the money they would ask something like "Would you pay $100 to kiss me?"

So the plain meaning of the question is your option A.

However a sign, for example at a school fair, saying "Kiss me for $100" would mean your option B. On the sign it would be an offer to provide a service, but the original is phrased as a request to receive a service.

That is not to say that a statement cannot have its meaning changed, even reversed, by context and tone of voice. If you are a boy in front of the above-mentioned sign and your girlfriend asks you "would you kiss me for $100" you had better assume she means "would you pay", even though her words technically mean she is offering to pay.

Consider this similar question:

• Should I provide an armed guard for a thousand dollars?

Is that asking whether to send a guard to protect or retrieve that amount of money? Is it asking whether to purchase that guard’s services at that price? If both are possible, is one the more likely and why? Should alternatives be considered?

Having descended to us from the Old English of a thousand years ago and beyond, the preposition for has come to be used in numerous different ways, many fairly different from one another. Broadly speaking two of these are “from what cause” and “to what effect”, where the former places emphasis on something in the past and the latter places emphasis on something in the future. If you dig a pit for fun, is this because it was somehow fun to dig it for its own sake or because you intend to use it for future fun of some sort? Digging a hole for buried gold that may have been secretly buried there is different from digging a hole for capturing wildlife secretly passing by under cover of darkness.

Once money enters the picture, however, the native speaker’s mind quickly settles on those senses appropriate to prices and payments, purchases and sales. It settles on this figure as meaning the cost of the exchange, not the purpose or destined effect.

There is therefore no ambiguity in “Kiss me for a $100?” that a native speaker would ever routinely pause to consider. It’s only a simple financial transaction, a this-for-that if you would. It’s just like when bananas are three for a dollar: that’s just how many pieces of fruit you get for that particular price. It is not like three competitors for a million-dollar award that they’re each striving to win for themself alone.