cheapie, n. and a. slang.
(ˈtʃiːpɪ)
Also cheapy.
[f. cheap a. + -ie, -y6.]
A. n. Something cheap (senses 1, 4, and 5); a thing of little value or of poor quality. spec. a film, book, etc., produced on a low budget. Occas. applied to a person.
| 1898 Eng. Dial. Dict. I. 571/2 Cheapy, sb. and adj: Yks. [tʃiə·pi.] 1. sb. A present; a second-hand article. w. Yks. Ah want a coit, an' ah'sl hev ta gooa on t' cheapy (B.K.). 1942 Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §30/2 Something poor, mean, contemptible... bushwa, cheapie, chicken-halibut, [etc.]. Ibid. 397 Contemptible person... cat licker, cheapie, cheap-mitt, [etc.]. Ibid. 587/4 Theater... cheapies, theaters with a small admission charge. 1945 Mencken Amer. Lang. Suppl. I. v. 338 It [sc. Variety] converts all the other parts of speech into nouns, e.g...clicky (a picture making money), cheapie, biggie, brush-off and vocal (a song). 1950 Jrnl. (Ithaca, N.Y.) 25 July 12/9 A couple of real cheapies..1929 Essex sedan..$39; 1930 Chevrolet Tudor..$59. 1952 Time 12 May 103 Low-cost pictures..known in the trade as ‘cheapies’. 1962 Movie Sept. 5/2 One can identify the same talent..behind a British cheapie of 1937, Jump for Glory, a 1945 racecourse movie, Salty O'Rourke, [etc.]. 1968 Telegraph (Brisbane) 30 Dec. 19/1 Gold Coast authorities have cracked down on the ‘cheapies’—youths who sleep at night on the beaches or in cars along the roadside or in parks. 1978 J. A. Michener Chesapeake 805 I'll explain that right now we don't happen to have anything in that price range. I give them coffee. I take them by the arm..to Gibbons, who does handle cheapies. 1983 Guardian 29 Nov. 19/3 It identified insurance shares as a cheapy a couple of years back. |
B. adj. Rather cheap, and often of inferior quality. Freq. of films.
| 1898 Eng. Dial. Dict. I. 571/2 Cheapy,..adj. Rather cheap, of second-rate quality. n. Yks. (I. W.) w. Yks. Them trahsers are a bad fit, they're nowt nobbut cheeapy (B.K.). 1973 Sat. Rev. Arts (U.S.) Feb. 50/1 That five of the eighteen [new] movies were American-made comedies suggests the beginnings of a trend toward comedy to follow the current run of violence oriented black films, X-rated sex movies and cheapie rip-offs of The Godfathers. 1979 Tucson (Arizona) Daily Citizen 20 Sept. 7b/7 Remember those cheapie exploitation movies like ‘Reefer Madness’, so shabbily made that they were actually funny? |