cheap

1 of 3

adjective

1
a
: charging or obtainable at a low price
a good cheap hotel
cheap tickets
b
: purchasable below the going price or the real value
c
: depreciated in value (as by currency inflation)
cheap dollars
2
a
: of inferior quality or worth : tawdry, sleazy
cheap workmanship
b
: stingy
My uncle was too cheap to pay for dinner.
c
: contemptible because of lack of any fine, lofty, or redeeming qualities
feeling cheap
I felt cheap, full of shame and guilt
3
: gained or done with little effort
a cheap victory
talk is cheap
4
of money : obtainable at a low rate of interest
cheapish adjective
cheapishly adverb
cheaply adverb
cheapness noun

cheap

2 of 3

adverb

: for little cost : cheaply
was able to buy it cheap
"It all seems to centre round that bust of Napoleon which I bought for this very room about four months ago. I picked it up cheap from Harding Brothers, two doors from the High Street Station."Arthur Conan Doyle

cheap

3 of 3

noun

obsolete

Examples of cheap in a Sentence

Adjective I always buy the cheapest brand of cereal. curtains made of cheap material He wears a cheap watch that's always breaking. This gas station is cheaper than the one by the highway. Don't be cheap—buy good quality tires for your car.
Recent Examples on the Web
Adjective
Many insurers required patients to try other, cheaper medications first — known as the fail-first approach — before they could be approved for brexanolone, which was shown in early trials reviewed by the FDA to provide relief within days. April Dembosky, CNN, 14 Mar. 2024 And trust us, finding a cheap mattress that doesn't sacrifice comfort is hard to come by. Sarah Madaus, Allure, 14 Mar. 2024 Budapest, Hungary Hungary is another cheap European country that offers an experience similar to that of expensive Western European cities. Nora Colomer, Fox News, 14 Mar. 2024 But sales were sluggish, and prices for those cheapest seats dropped $20 by the morning of the show. Journal Sentinel, 14 Mar. 2024 New York Magazine reported last year that some get it from wholesalers or cheap stores. Andy Newman, New York Times, 13 Mar. 2024 That said, three of the cheapest counties in the country are in Texas. USA TODAY, 13 Mar. 2024 Shein, for its part, puts out thousands of new styles a day — inconceivable kilotons of cheap, essentially disposable clothes produced in response to the most flitting tremors of consumer demand. Jonah Weiner, New York Times, 3 Mar. 2024 For the same reason that electric cars are cheaper to drive. Michael Barnard, Forbes, 2 Mar. 2024
Adverb
As with drones, militants used cheap, often off-the-shelf materials to build weapons that exploited a Pentagon vulnerability. Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY, 29 Jan. 2024 So, now is not the time to go cheap on the FBI or the Department of Defense. ABC News, 24 Dec. 2023 Wall Street complains because higher rates add risk to otherwise painless ways to make gobs of money by borrowing cheap and lending long. Scott Burns, Dallas News, 29 Aug. 2023 Musk ultimately wants to make space travel cheap enough that even Average Joes can access the cosmos—or Mars. Lauren Sigfusson, Discover Magazine, 20 Feb. 2018 But flying cheap doesn’t matter much if there isn’t anywhere good to fly. Alexandra Skores, Dallas News, 13 Apr. 2023 Low interest rates put in place to support the economy after the Great Recession made borrowing cheap and pushed investors to seek out higher returns from riskier companies, spurring financing and growth for tech companies. Joe Rennison Eli Murray, New York Times, 31 Mar. 2023 Lemieux was on the ice to hoist it, receiving only a two-game suspension for cheap-shotting Draper. Viv Bernstein, Detroit Free Press, 29 May 2021 The tree was usually found on land that had been given away or sold cheap by the federal government—and then had to be repurchased at very high cost. Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Review of Books, 2 Mar. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cheap.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Noun and Adjective

Middle English chep, from Old English cēap trade; akin to Old High German kouf trade; both ultimately from Latin caupo tradesman

First Known Use

Adjective

1509, in the meaning defined at sense 1b

Adverb

1569, in the meaning defined above

Noun

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of cheap was before the 12th century

Dictionary Entries Near cheap

Cite this Entry

“Cheap.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cheap. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

cheap

adjective
ˈchēp
1
a
: available at low cost or at less than the true value
potatoes are cheap right now
b
: of low price
always buys the cheapest brand
c
: charging low prices
always wants to go to a cheap place
2
: gained with little effort
a cheap victory
3
a
: of low quality or value
cheap material wears out quickly
a cheap joke
b
: lowered in one's own opinion
feel cheap
c
: stingy sense 1
don't be so cheap
cheap adverb
cheapen
ˈchē-pən
verb
cheaply adverb
cheapness noun
Etymology

Adjective

from earlier obsolete cheap (noun) "bargain," from Old English cēap "trade" — related to chap entry 3

More from Merriam-Webster on cheap

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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