cheap

Definition of cheap

17 senses · 4 parts of speech · etymology included

adj

Low or reduced in price.

“Where there are many sellers and few purchases, land will be cheap.”
“One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.”
“Datacasting bypasses the wired, terrestrial Internet and is a cheaper way to distribute software than pressing and mailing CDs.”
“The cheapest antiager around: a good moisturizer.”
“[Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.”

See all 17 definitions

adj

Low or reduced in price.

“Where there are many sellers and few purchases, land will be cheap.”
“One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.”
“Datacasting bypasses the wired, terrestrial Internet and is a cheaper way to distribute software than pressing and mailing CDs.”
“The cheapest antiager around: a good moisturizer.”
“[Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.”
Of poor quality.
Of little worth.

“You grow cheap in every subject's eye.”
(slang)Underhanded or unfair.

“the cheap trick of hiding deadly lava under pushable blocks”
(derogatory, informal)Stingy; mean; excessively frugal.

“Insurance is expensive, but don't be so cheap that you risk losing your home because of a fire.”
Trading at a price level which is low relative to historical trends, a similar asset, or (for derivatives) a theoretical value.

“The ETF is trading cheap to NAV right now; we can arb this by buying the ETF and selling the underlying constituents.”
Taking little of system time or resources.

“the algorithm is cheap to compute”

noun

(countable, obsolete, uncountable)Trade; traffic; chaffer; chaffering.
(countable, obsolete, uncountable)A market; marketplace.
(countable, obsolete, uncountable)Price.
(countable, obsolete, uncountable)A low price; a bargain.

“The sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest chandler's in Europe.”
(countable, obsolete, uncountable)Cheapness; lowness of price; abundance of supply.

verb

(intransitive, obsolete)To trade; traffic; bargain; chaffer; ask the price of goods; cheapen goods.
(obsolete, transitive)To bargain for; chaffer for; ask the price of; offer a price for; cheapen.
(obsolete, transitive)To buy; purchase.
(obsolete, transitive)To sell.

adv

(obsolete)Cheaply.

“I bought this cheap in a junk shop.”
“The pet shop has some budgerigars going cheap.”
“March 24 1658, John Milton, letter to Emeric Bigot I need not request you to purchase them as cheap as possible”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

As a noun, from Middle English chep, from Old English cēap (“trade, market, value”), from Proto-West Germanic *kaup. As a verb, from Middle English chepen, from Old English ċēapian (“to…

See full etymology

As a noun, from Middle English chep, from Old English cēap (“trade, market, value”), from Proto-West Germanic *kaup. As a verb, from Middle English chepen, from Old English ċēapian (“to buy, bargain, trade”), from Proto-West Germanic *kaupōn, from Proto-Germanic *kaupōną, a verbal derivative of *kaupô (“trader”), from Latin caupō. The adjective originated as a shortening of Middle and Early Modern English good cheap, literally “good purchase” (as in “that was good cheap”, i.e. “that was [a] good purchase”). Compare Dutch goedkoop, French bon marché. Cognates Cognate with Scots chepe (“to sell”), chape (“sale price”), North Frisian keap (“purchase”), West Frisian keap (“purchase, buy, acquisition”), Dutch koop (“buy, purchase, deal”), kopen (“to buy, purchase, shop”), Low German kopen (“to buy”), German Kauf (“trade, traffic, bargain, purchase, buy”), kaufen (“to buy”), Swedish köp (“bargain, purchase”), köpa (“to buy, purchase”), Norwegian Nynorsk kjøpa (“to buy, purchase”), Icelandic kaup (“purchase, bargain”), kaupa (“to purchase”); also borrowed as Finnish kauppa (“shop, trade”), Russian купить (kupitʹ, “to purchase”), Old Church Slavonic коупити (kupiti, “to purchase”), Bulgarian ку́пя (kúpja, “to purchase”), Serbo-Croatian купити (“to purchase”), Czech koupit (“to purchase”), Polish kupić (“to purchase”).

Anagrams of cheap

3 plays · some not in Scrabble

Best play chape 12 points

Words you can make from cheap

30 playable · top: CHAPE (12 pts)

Best play chape 12 points

5-letter words

1 word

PEACH 12 pts

4-letter words

9 words

3-letter words

12 words

2-letter words

7 words

Hooks

2 extensions · 2 back

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