Category: Lexicon

 tʃip // (Adjective)

1a: 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
2a: 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

Etymology

“low in price, that may be bought at small cost,” c. 1500, ultimately from Old English noun ceap “traffic, a purchase,” from ceapian (v.) “to trade, buy and sell,” probably from early Germanic borrowings of Latin caupo “petty tradesman, huckster, peddler,” cauponari “to haggle” (see chapman). Compare, from the same borrowing, German kaufen “to buy,” Old Norse kaupa “to bargain, barter,” Gothic kaupon “to traffic, trade.”

The sense evolution is from the noun meaning “a barter, a purchase” to “a purchase as rated by the buyer,” hence the adjectival meaning “inexpensive,” the main modern sense, via Middle English phrases such as god chep “favorable bargain” (12c., a translation of French a bon marché).

Sense of “lightly esteemed, common” is from 1590s (compare similar evolution of Latin vilis). The meaning “low in price” was represented in Old English by undeor, literally “un-dear” (but deop ceap, literally “deep cheap,” meant “high price”).

The word also was used in Old English for “market” (as in ceapdæg “market day”), a sense surviving in place names Cheapside, East Cheap, etc. To do something on the cheap “with very little expense” is from 1859. Cheap shot originally was U.S. football jargon for a head-on tackle; extended sense “unfair hit” in politics, etc. is by 1970.

German billig “cheap” is from Middle Low German billik, originally “fair, just,” with a sense evolution via billiger preis “fair price,” etc.

mʌnˈdeɪn //(Adjective)

1: Of, relating to, or characteristic of the world

2: Characterized by the practical, transitory, and ordinary : commonplace the mundane concerns of day-to-day life

Etymology

Mid-15c., mondeine, “of this world, worldly, terrestrial,” from Old French mondain “of this world, worldly, earthly, secular;” also “pure, clean; noble, generous” (12c.) and directly from Late Latin mundanus “belonging to the world” (as distinct from the Church), in classical Latin “a citizen of the world, cosmopolite,” from mundus “universe, world,” which is identical to mundus  “clean, elegant,” but the exact connection is uncertain and the etymology is unknown.

Latin mundus “world” was used as a translation of Greek kosmos (see cosmos) in its Pythagorean sense of “the physical universe” (the original sense of the Greek word was “orderly arrangement”). Like kosmos (and perhaps by influence of it), Latin mundus also was used of a woman’s “ornaments, dress,” which also could entangle the adjective mundus “clean, elegant.”

The English word’s extended sense of “dull, uninteresting” is attested by 1850. Related: Mundanely. The mundane era was the chronology that began with the supposed epoch of the Creation (famously reckoned as 4004 B.C.E.).