Cheap at half the price

Meaning

A jokey way of saying expensive.

Origin

Before we start on this phrase permit me to leap astride my favourite hobby horse for a while. Cheap prices - arghh, no! Price is a measure of quantity and, as such, can be high or low. Prices can't be cheap, any more than they can be green, or hirsute, or pro-communist. Likewise, the phrase that can be heard in most weather forecasts - hot temperatures. No, again; temperature can be high or low, but it can't be hot. Then there's fast speeds and... okay, I'll stop now; let us proceed.

Describing an item as 'cheap at half the price' doesn't really convey any useful meaning - we would expect it to be. Any item which is worth £100 could reasonably be described as cheap if offered at $80, fairly priced at £100 and expensive at £120. At half of those prices however, i.e. at £40, £50 or £60, it would be cheap.

The phrase causes a certain amount of dispute. I've seen all these positions argued in Phrasefinder Bulletin Board discussions:

1. 'Cheap at half the price' is understood to mean 'reasonably priced' and if people understand that meaning why worry about logical niceties.
2. It was never intended to be taken seriously and is a pun on the meaningful phrase 'cheap at twice the price', intended either humorously or in order to deceive.
3. It is just an error made by people who aren't thinking what they are saying.

I waver between camps 2 and 3. Cheap at half the price is typical of the street cries of barrow boys. Many of these make no strict sense and stem from the same kind of linguistic exuberance and humour that brought us Cockney rhyming slang. Another theme in barrow boys calls is the attempt to mislead or at least distract the public and draw their attention away from whatever mild scam the traders might be engaged in. In this way they aren't a million miles away from street magicians who used to use terms like hocus pocus as part of their distraction technique. For example, there's a street cry from the 1940s - 'apples a pound pears'. This makes no sense whatsoever, but sounds as though it ought to. Likewise with 'cheap at half the price'. In the hustle and bustle of a street market it sounds as though the customer is getting a bargain. With the time to think the phrase through it is clear that no promise of value for money was made.

In a more recent context I often hear stock market reports and the like that suggest 'up to 50% or more' of such and such. This makes no sense either, as every quantity is up to 50% or more, but I've never noticed anyone pulled up short for using it.

'Cheap at half the price' is by no means recent. Here's an example from The Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel, October 1871:

"A New Foundland dog recently sold in this city for $75. He was cheap at half the price."

As an example of the confusion this term causes we couldn't so better. Did they intent us to think the dog was inexpensive at $75 or that it would have been had it been sold for $37.50?