[Idiom] waht does this mean?

[vptptv]

Cheap at half the price. Can you tell what means this?

 

[emsr2d2]

Cheap at half the price. Can you tell what means this?

This is a somewhat sarcastic bastardisation of the phrase "Cheap at twice the price". This is used to say that something is so cheap that, even if you doubled the price, it would still be cheap! I have no idea when/why the strange alternative came into use, but certainly in the UK, it's regularly used to mean that something is very, very cheap (even though it doesn't really make sense!)

 

[Barb_D]

Oh, I use it sarcastically too, but to mean that something costs more than it should -- that there isn't great value.

A: I heard you ate at the new fancy restaurant in town. How was it?
B: Well, the food was really pretty good, but it would have been cheap at half the price. (We paid a lot for our dinner.)