Cheap example sentences
Related (15): inexpensive, affordable, budget-friendly, economical, low-cost, bargain, discount, expensive, costly, premium, quality, value, frugal, thrifty, stingy
"Cheap" Example Sentences
Common Phrases
- cheap and cheerful
- cheap shot
- dirt cheap
- cheap skate
- on the cheap
- cheap thrill
- cheap labor
- cheap trick
- cheap as chips
- cheap knock-off
- cheap at the price
Examples by Level
A1
- This shirt is cheap, so I bought two.
- The cheap food at that restaurant is not very good.
- My phone is old and cheap, but it still works.
A2
- She always looks for cheap flights online before booking her holidays.
- The cheap wine tasted better than we expected at the dinner party.
- He felt bad buying cheap shoes because they hurt his feet after one day.
B1
- There's a difference between cheap and affordable — one is just low quality, the other is actually a good deal.
- My parents used to joke that my dad's taste in music was cheap, but honestly, he had better taste than anyone.
- Buying cheap furniture seems smart until you're moving it for the third time and it's falling apart.
B2
- The company's decision to use cheap materials backfired spectacularly when the product started failing within weeks.
- She'd grown up thinking that wanting nice things made you shallow, so she deliberately bought cheap versions of everything — a habit she's only now unlearning.
- What felt like a cheap thrill at twenty — staying out all night, no consequences — looks exhausting from where I'm sitting now.
C1
- There's something almost defiant about refusing to apologize for cheap pleasures — a good trashy novel, a mediocre action film, the kind of joy that doesn't require justification.
- The accusation that his work was cheap sentiment masked a deeper anxiety about whether sincerity itself had become unfashionable.
- What we dismiss as cheap nostalgia often contains the most honest record of who we actually were, before we learned to be more selective about our memories.
C2
- He'd spent years cultivating an aesthetic of restraint, only to realize that his rejection of anything remotely cheap or obvious had left him with a life that was meticulously empty.
- The particular sting of a cheap betrayal — one that didn't even require much effort or imagination — was somehow worse than grand dramatic ones.
- There's a kind of wisdom in accepting that some of the most sustaining things in life are, by any conventional measure, cheap — and that this fact says nothing whatsoever about their worth.
Examples by Scenario
🏠 Everyday Life
- I grabbed a cheap coffee from the corner shop this morning and it somehow tasted worse than yesterday's.
- The cheap plastic bag from the grocery store ripped open in the rain and scattered everything across the sidewalk.
- My kid insists on wearing those cheap light-up sneakers even though they're already falling apart.
💼 Workplace
- The office tried to save money by switching to cheap coffee, and everyone's been complaining about it for two weeks straight.
- My manager asked me to find a cheap solution for the presentation setup, which basically means I'm improvising with what we have.
- Someone left a cheap pen on my desk and I've accidentally been using it instead of my own — now I can't find it.
📊 Business
- Our competitor's cheap knockoff of our product is actually hurting their brand more than ours at this point.
- The decision to source cheap labor overseas saved us money but created quality control problems we're still fixing.
- We positioned ourselves as premium, so going cheap on packaging would send completely the wrong message to our customers.
🛒 Buying / Shopping
- These cheap jeans looked fine in the store, but the seams are already coming apart after two washes.
- I'm torn between the expensive version and the cheap alternative — they look almost identical online.
- The cheap option is half the price, but the reviews are full of people saying it broke within a month.
✈️ Travel
- We booked a cheap hotel in the city center and spent half the night listening to noise from the street below.
- Flying cheap airlines means no baggage allowance, so I'm trying to fit everything into a carry-on.
- The tour guide warned us that the cheap restaurants near the tourist area would overcharge us, so we walked further into the neighborhood instead.
📚 Education
- The school bought cheap textbooks that are falling apart, and half the pages are already loose.
- My daughter's teacher said that learning doesn't have to be expensive — some of the best lessons come from cheap or free resources.
- The university cut corners by using cheap materials in the new building, and now there are already structural issues.
❤️ Relationships
- He gave me a cheap ring as a joke, and somehow it became the one I actually wear every day.
- She felt hurt when he bought her a cheap gift, not because of the price but because she knew he hadn't thought about it at all.
- We've been together long enough that cheap takeout on the couch feels more romantic than any fancy dinner ever could.
📰 News / Politics
- The politician's attempt to win votes with cheap populist rhetoric backfired when people realized there was no actual plan behind it.
- Environmental groups are pushing back against cheap fast fashion and its devastating impact on textile waste.
- The scandal revealed that the company had been cutting corners with cheap safety measures for years while claiming to prioritize worker protection.
💻 Technology
- I bought a cheap phone charger and it overheated within a week — apparently that's a common problem with knockoffs.
- The AI-generated art looks impressive until you zoom in and see all the cheap shortcuts the algorithm took.
- There's a whole market for cheap knockoff smart home devices, but the security risks probably aren't worth the savings.
📝 Formal Writing
- The study examined the correlation between cheap housing availability and increased rates of residential instability in urban centers.
- Regulations prohibiting the sale of cheap counterfeit goods have been strengthened across multiple jurisdictions in response to consumer safety concerns.
- The report concludes that while cheap manufacturing processes reduce production costs, they often result in higher long-term expenses due to quality degradation and warranty claims.