ruinously high wages.    From Wordnet, Princeton University. 

Adjective : a ruinous war. ,a ruinous house. ,a ruinous city from antiquity.    From Dictionary.com. 

The cost of child care is, for many women, ruinously high.    From Wordnik.com.  [The pill: Making motherhood better for 50 years] Reference

His fellowship lost, he came, ruinously humbled, to live in this.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 43, May, 1861 Creator] Reference

The cost of transporting him would make him ruinously expensive.    From Wordnik.com.  [Around the World in 80 Days] Reference

More than that proportion of her great estates are ruinously mortgaged.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866] Reference

Why else promise to stick to Brown's ruinously expensive spending plans?.    From Wordnik.com.  [Sorry all round] Reference

They lurk like vermin, in many cases invisible to golfers and ruinously deep.    From Wordnik.com.  [No Course Like the Old Course] Reference

Poor Scotland! how ruinously overwhelmed beneath the briny waters of adversity.    From Wordnik.com.  [Sketches of the Covenanters] Reference

Compared with the frugal Germans and Japanese, we are ruinously self-indulgent.    From Wordnik.com.  [Is There A Savings Gap?] Reference

Now he was very glad he had, even though a private room was ruinously expensive.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Outstretched Shadow] Reference

And dragged me inside to replace my ruinously expensive get up with a mangy cagoul.    From Wordnik.com.  [How to look the part on the piste] Reference

Ships traveling between the stars by light-drive were rare and ruinously expensive.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Colors of Space] Reference

Business claims that these proposals would erode efficiency or ruinously raise costs.    From Wordnik.com.  [FACING THE POWERS THAT BE] Reference

We near an Ireland-style downgrading followed by an era of ruinously expensive borrowing.    From Wordnik.com.  [Gordon Brown, Charlie Whelan and Me] Reference

Thorby was badly squeezed by these maneuvers; he was finding it ruinously expensive to be rich.    From Wordnik.com.  [Citizen Of The Galaxy]

With a pre-existing condition, new insurance will be ruinously expensive, if you can get it at all.    From Wordnik.com.  [What to Do About Pre-existing Conditions] Reference

But in 2008, five years after the construction of a ruinously expensive Museum Center, the Mark Twain House.    From Wordnik.com.  [Surviving by Twain's Example] Reference

That'd be ruinously expensive, but if we went by some Third World carrier we might get government kickbacks.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Gates of Noon]

Cynthia thought she was about to say something dreadful, something ruinously cutting, to this contemptible man.    From Wordnik.com.  [Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine]

If everything worked as hoped, his airboat ripped through the Merseian plates, ruinously at kilometers per second.    From Wordnik.com.  [Ensign Flandry]

An incremental step toward halting the ruinously expensive avalanche of paperwork is far better than no step at all.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Dose of Clarity] Reference

They shirked open-air exercise altogether because their boots wore out ruinously and pinched and hurt them if they took it.    From Wordnik.com.  [In the Days of the Comet] Reference

If not so finely ground the flour was whiter, but the large percentage of middlings made the yield per bushel ruinously small.    From Wordnik.com.  [Scientific American Supplement, No. 303, October 22, 1881] Reference

For both these reasons, defense costs rise faster than planned for in defense budgets and have become "ruinously expensive.".    From Wordnik.com.  [John Tepper Marlin: Experts Slam DoD Waste in Book for Obama] Reference

I must tell her the truth, or she may in her ignorance commit herself to some course or other that may be ruinously compromising.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Changed Man] Reference

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, he argues, is the biggest, most dangerous and ruinously expensive con trick in history.    From Wordnik.com.  [Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick] Reference

But small farmers worry the measure's fees and inspection requirements would be ruinously expensive and are pushing for exemptions.    From Wordnik.com.  [Small Farms Balk at Food-Safety Bill] Reference

History shows that more empires have been brought down by waging ruinously expensive wars on borrowed money than by foreign invasion.    From Wordnik.com.  [Eric Margolis: Obama: Tell Americans the Truth About Afghanistan] Reference

Now, we pause not to ask, why, if the law already makes the prices of corn ruinously low, any association can be needed to make it lower?.    From Wordnik.com.  [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV.] Reference

It goes without saying, that to the farmer there are three great factors in the present situation: a ruinously low price for his products.    From Wordnik.com.  [If Not Silver, What?] Reference

Can that government that has been ruinously responsive to public appetites for benefits and security be counted on to stop being injurious?.    From Wordnik.com.  [Up From Geniality] Reference

The one he could obtain on conditions; the other he could dispose of at a discount which, though ruinously heavy, still left him enough to frolic on.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore] Reference

Commercial enterprise was paralyzed by prohibitive legislation; public credit was shaken to its base; the prime necessaries of life were ruinously dear.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Grand Old Man] Reference

Our neighbors said that it was delightful to sit by our fire, -- but then, for their part, they could not afford it, wood was so ruinously dear, and all that.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864] Reference

It is a part of that false halo with which enthusiastic admiration (reckless of gilding and ruinously prodigal of ochre) delights to endue the favored heads of the.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860] Reference