Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
cheap (adv., adj., n.), cheaply (adv.)
The adjective means either “inexpensive” or “shoddy”; only context can control what your reader or listener thinks you intend: This wine was excellent and cheap besides talks only of its being inexpensive. We had a cheap dinner is open to differing but usually pejorative interpretations. The adverb comes in two forms, an old flat adverb, as in I can get you that house cheap, and a conventionally inflected adverb, as in She furnished the house cheaply but comfortably. Both adverbs are Standard, but cheaply often has the same ambiguity as the adjective. The noun occurs in a British idiom that dates from around 1800: He does everything on the cheap (that is, “as cheaply as possible”). On the cheap is still slang, albeit literary-sounding slang, and it is pejorative.
