First all the simple prices (Shoes – $30) sprouted nines (Shoes – $29.99) in order to convince math-challenged customers that the product was more affordable because of a single missing penny. I made peace with that development, because who am I to question a marketing strategy? I deal with words, not numbers.
Next up on the sales horizon was the addition of the word price, as if we consumers thought that $29.99 represented the amount the store would pay the customer to take a pair of shoes off the shelf. Price $29.99 was a little too much information, but no harm done. The last price-straw, as far as I’m concerned, is an extra D. More and more, shoes are priced at $30 or $29.99, figures not adjusted for inflation.
In grammar terms, the cost of an item is attached to a participle (priced), a descriptive verb form. Why? Usually participles give you extra information: Jenny, hiking in stiletto heels, broke her ankle. The participle in that sentence is hiking. It’s derived from a verb (to hike), but it’s functioning as a description of Jenny. (The real verb in the sentence, in case you’re interested, is broke.) The participle tells you that Jenny didn’t break her ankle doing something noble, like running after a mugger or saving a baby from a burning building. The participle tells you that Jenny is either clueless (I thought we were going to have dinner at a four-star restaurant!) or just dumb (Who knew shoes wobbled in the wilderness?). Hiking serves a purpose in the sentence.
The participle priced at implies human activity without identifying the actor. Who did the pricing? You have to guess. It may be the boss: Our store manager, desperate for a promotion, priced the shoes at $30 so he could brag about his empty stockroom. Perhaps this participle is an attempt to distance store employees from consumer outrage: Don’t blame us. We just sell the things, which are priced at $30 by nameless bureaucrats in the main office who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing these shoes.
One thing is clear about this participle: priced at usually precedes a number that is much too high, considering the item it’s attached to. Yet somehow I doubt you’ll see overpriced at $30 or $29.99 anytime soon.