cheap [OE] Nowadays something that is cheap is inexpensive or of low value. In Old English, though, ceap (derived from Latin caupo ‘small trader, innkeeper’) meant ‘bargaining or trade’. *Chap is based on the same word. The obsolete phrase good cheap meant ‘a good bargain’, and it is from this that the modern sense developed. In place names such as Cheapside and Eastcheap, cheap means ‘market’. If you say that something is cheap at the price, you mean that it is well worth having regardless of the cost. A stronger alternative version of this is cheap at twice the price, and you will also hear the confusing inversion cheap at half the price.