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Cheapness   /tʃˈipnəs/   Listen
Cheapness

noun
1.
A price below the standard price.  Synonyms: bargain rate, cut price, cut rate.
2.
Tastelessness by virtue of being cheap and vulgar.  Synonyms: sleaze, tackiness, tat.






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"Cheapness" Quotes from Famous Books



... picturesquely described in ballads, the admission does not extend to the present day. There is no good greenwood now, except a few insignificant patches, which are pretty sharply preserved; and the killing of game, except on a small scale and at considerable risk, is difficult. The cheapness of modern manufactures has interfered a good deal with the various trades of mending, mankind having made up their minds that it is better to buy new things and throw them away when they fail than to have them patched ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... had no prepared itinerary, but to have wandered as the spirit moved her—Naples, Leghorn, Turin, Genoa. The cheapness of Italy appealed to ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... as we had in Boston; but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness nor the names of his bread, I bade him give me three-penny worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quantity, but took it, and, having no room in my pockets, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... these years of cheap theatrical boarding houses (the most soul-searing cheapness in the world), of one-night stands, of insult, disappointment, rebuff, and something that often came perilously near to want, Josie Fifer managed to retain a certain humorous outlook on life. There was something whimsical about it. She could even ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... something of an idealist, and greatly averse to the printing-press and the wide dissemination of books to which it led. Out of his opposition to the machine grew a dislike to its productions, which he denounced as vulgar; and not even their comparative cheapness and the fact that, when all was said, he was a man of limited means, would induce him to harbour a single volume ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... jacket! What are you thinking of, Arthur?" said Fanny, answering her husband first. "No, Harry, I was not astonished at the cheapness. But it was a beauty, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... thought the people of Bordeaux more sober as well as more industrious than the people of Toulouse, he looked upon the inhabitants of the southern provinces of France generally as among the soberest people in Europe, and ascribes their sobriety to the cheapness of their liquor. "People are seldom guilty of excess," he says, "in what is their daily fare." He tells that when a French regiment came from some of the northern provinces of France, where wine was somewhat dear, to ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... people have made their way, because they have been intelligent, industrious, and in earnest. And as the people have made their way, so has the post-office. The number of its offices, the mileage it covers, its extraordinary cheapness, the rapidity with which it has been developed, are all proofs of great things done; and it is by no means standing still even in these evil days of war. Improvements are even now on foot, copied in a great measure ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... the cheapness of things here, as compared with the curio stores in Manila. Forty dollars "Mex" meant but about twenty dollars in ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock

... three weeks in Paris had been given up to enjoying the new conditions of existence. But now practical matters claimed consideration. The pension in the Rue Boissy d'Anglas was not suitable as a permanent abode. Rooms must be looked for, combining cheapness with a good situation, within easy distance of the scene of Hadria's future musical studies, and also within reach of some park or gardens for ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... the existence of slavery, as with us, will retard the evils of civilization? Very obviously. It is the intense competition of civilized life, that gives rise to the excessive cheapness of labor, and the excessive cheapness of labor is the cause of the evils in question. Slave labor can never be so cheap as what is called free labor. Political economists have established as the natural standard of wages in a fully peopled country, the value of the laborer's existence. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... of this consists in the number and character and cheapness, and peculiar mode of publication, of the works of amusement of the present day. The works of amusement published only a very few years since were comparatively few in number; they were less exciting, and therefore ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... elegantly printed in Arabic, and distributed on different parts of the Coast, might have a wonderful effect. The expense would be but trifling; curiosity would induce many to read it; and the evident superiority which it would possess over their present manuscripts, both in point of elegance and cheapness, might at last obtain it a place among ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... been absorbed in admiration of Marseilles harbour, she had come up on deck, and settled herself in a canvas chair. This time she had a rug of her own, a thin navy blue rug which, like her frock, might have been chosen for its cheapness. Although she held a volume of "Monte Cristo," she was not reading, and as Stephen turned towards her, their ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... class many appliances would be possible. A microscope, for instance, or chemical apparatus, might belong to the society, which each individual by himself would not be able to afford; while as for books—books on these subjects are now published at a marvellous cheapness, which puts them within the reach of every one, and of an excellence which twenty years ago was impossible. Any working man in this town might now, especially in a class, consult scientific books, for which I, as a lad, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... present time no coal has been mined along the Amoor, though enough is known to exist. The cheapness and abundance of wood will render coal of little importance for many years to come. Nicolayevsk is supplied with coal from Sakhalin Island, where it is abundant and easily worked. Iron ore has been discovered on the upper Amoor ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... money, and embarked for Philadelphia. Here his fears were revived, and a nearer survey of savage manners once more shook his resolution. For a while he relinquished his purpose, and purchasing a farm on Schuylkill, within a few miles of the city, set himself down to the cultivation of it. The cheapness of land, and the service of African slaves, which were then in general use, gave him who was poor in Europe all the advantages of wealth. He passed fourteen years in a thrifty and laborious manner. In this time new objects, new employments, and new associates appeared ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... and planning the work for the morrow, and eating hunter's stew, scout style, patent applied for. And notwithstanding the slurs which Roy had cast at the sky it was pleasant to see that vast bespangled blackness over head. In the solemn night the neighboring shacks were divested of their tawdry cheapness, the loose and flapping strips of tar-paper and the broken windows were not visible, and the buildings seemed clothed in a kind of sombre dignity—silent memorials of the boys who had made those old boards and rafters ring with their shouts and laughter. Not a ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... addressing to Mrs. Lombard some random remark on the beauties of Siena. The lady murmured a resigned assent, and Doctor Lombard interposed with a smile: "My dear sir, my wife considers Siena a most salubrious spot, and is favorably impressed by the cheapness of the marketing; but she deplores the total absence of muffins and cannel coal, and cannot resign herself to the Italian ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... war, my father was reduced to half-pay; with which we retired to a village in the country, which the acquaintance of some genteel families who resided in it, and the cheapness of living, particularly recommended. My father rented a small house, with a piece of ground sufficient to keep a horse for him, and a cow for the benefit of his family. An old man servant managed his ground; while a maid, who had formerly been my mother's, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... tried to buy a ten-dollar dress, and had declared that she would never wear it! Finally, they had compromised on a dark skirt and two middy blouses; but Frieda took no pains to hide her resentment at the cheapness of the clothing. Many of her remarks had been absolutely insulting; and now Frances was utterly disgusted with her, and wished that Pansy troop had taken Ruth Henry's advice, and let Frieda Hammer stay where she was till the end ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... confirmed by the "voice in the midst of the four animals:"—"A measure of wheat for a penny," etc. The quantity of food, and the price, as here announced, would seem to the English reader to express plenty and cheapness. But when it is understood that the "measure of wheat" was the ordinary allowance for a laboring man, and "a penny" the usual wages for one day; a little more than a quart, for about fifteen cents: it ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... a large English population, drawn there by two powerful attractions. The first is the beauty of the place, with its healthy climate, its unrivalled collections of art, and its connection with the world at large. The second is the astonishing cheapness of living, though, alas! this is greatly changed from former times, since Florence has become the capital of Italy. Formerly a palace could be rented for a trifle, troops of servants for another trifle, and the table could be furnished from day to day with rarities and delicacies ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... pp. 16, 22. For the fame of Egyptian medicine at Rome, see Sharpe, History of Egypt, vol. ii, pp. 151, 184. For Assyria, see especially George Smith in Delitzsch's German translation, p. 34, and F. Delitzsch's appendix, p. 27. On the cheapness and commonness of miracles of healing in antiquity, see Sharpe, quoting St. Jerome, vol. ii, pp. 276, 277. As to the influence of Chaldean ideas of magic and disease, see Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. i, p. 404 and note. But, on the other hand, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... SATURDAY REVIEW says: "The Globe Editions are admirable for their scholarly editing, their typographical excellence, their compendious form, and their cheapness." The BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW says: "In compendiousness, elegance, and scholarliness the Globe Editions of Messrs. Macmillan surpass any popular series of our classics hitherto given to the public. As near an approach to miniature perfection ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... manifest that we were throwing money into the Arno, by our way of taking furnished rooms, while to take an apartment and furnish it would leave us a clear return of the furniture at the end of the first year in exchange for our outlay, and all but a free residence afterwards, the cheapness of furniture being quite fabulous at the present crisis. . . . In fact we have really done it magnificently, and planted ourselves in the Guidi Palace in the favourite suite of the last Count (his arms are in scagliola on the floor of my bedroom). Though we have ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... unutterable sadness, for my dear sister Caroline has left home to-day with my mother, and I shall not see them again for several weeks. They have accepted a long-standing invitation to visit some old friends of ours, the Marlets, who live at Versailles for cheapness—my mother thinking that it will be for the good of Caroline to see a little of France and Paris. But I don't quite like her going. I fear she may lose some of that childlike simplicity and gentleness which ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... schools will assume the role of teacher, while Chinese graduates returning from Japan will be welcomed as professors of a higher grade. This Japanning process, as it is derisively styled, may be somewhat superficial; but it has the recommendation of cheapness and rapidity in comparison with depending on teachers from the West. It has, moreover, the immense advantage of racial kinship and example. Of course the few students who go to the fountain-heads of science—in the ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... two years he lingered on in Petersburg, hoping to drop into some snug berth in the civil service, but no such snug berth came in his way. His daughter had left school, his expenses were increasing every day. Resigning himself to his fate, he decided to remove to Moscow for the sake of the greater cheapness of living, and took a tiny low-pitched house in the Old Stables Road, with a coat of arms seven feet long on the roof, and there began the life of a retired general at Moscow on an income of 2750 roubles ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... of beasts! thy death should teach Mankind the cheapness of display; More eloquent than human speech, Thy grand example shows the way To pass from life, unheard, unseen, And with composed, majestic mien ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... the travellers was Keswick. Here they engaged lodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. Probably Shelley was attracted to the lake country as much by the celebrated men who lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, and the cheapness of its accommodation. He had long entertained an admiration for Southey's poetry, and was now beginning to study Wordsworth and Coleridge. But if he hoped for much companionship with the literary lions of the lakes, he was disappointed. Coleridge ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... farmer himself, it appeared, was not at home, but his wife, who represented him this evening, made no objection to hiring Tess, on her agreeing to remain till Old Lady-Day. Female field-labour was seldom offered now, and its cheapness made it profitable for tasks which women could perform as ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... modern business basis by men. I make no criticism upon this transference beyond remarking that you hear no howl about it from the supplanted ones, as you never fail to do over the converse process, when male workers are driven out of occupations to make way for women, whose cheapness makes them so formidable an industrial competitor. But whichever way it works, sex discrimination usually bodes no good to the lasting interest of any of the workers. When a trade passes out of the status ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... lodging—the carpets, the curtains, the upholstery in general, with their crude and violent colouring and their vulgar material—the trumpery things in the shops, the extreme bad taste of the dress of the women, the cheapness and baseness of every attempt at decoration in the cafes and railway-stations, the hopeless frivolity of everything that pretends to be a work of art—all this modern crudity runs riot over the relics ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... such as we had in Boston; but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So, not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness, nor the names of his bread, I had him give me three-penny worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quantity, but took it, and, having no room in my pockets, walked off ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... of the Three Days, in Paris, a fierce controversy took place between the absolutists, the republicans, and the constitutionalists. Among the subjects introduced in the Chambers was the comparative cheapness of our system of government; the absolutists asserting that the people of the United States paid more direct and indirect taxes than the French. La Fayette appealed to Mr. Cooper, who entered the arena, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... for those who have small incomes and good consciences. The latter, to residents especially, are at least as indispensable as the former: seeing that, however just the reputation of their growing little town for superior cheapness in matters of meat and drink, its character in things regarding men and manners is quite ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Marseilles, for the well-known establishment at Cette, where they are used for mixing with other wines. It should at once be understood that no quality of Cyprus wines is suitable to the English market, as they are generally shunned even by the English residing in the island, where their extreme cheapness might tempt people into the bad taste of consuming them. At the same time, these wines are well appreciated by the native population, especially ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... oil is good and cheap: their wine is indifferent: but their chief care seems employed on the culture of silk, the staple of Provence, which is every where shaded with plantations of mulberry trees, for the nourishment of the worms. Notwithstanding the boasted cheapness of every article of housekeeping, in the south of France, I am persuaded a family may live for less money at York, Durham, Hereford, and in many other cities of England than at Aix in Provence; keep a more plentiful table; and be much more comfortably ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... she used to herself; perhaps, as the butler had suggested, she had brought home some terrible ideas from the East—ideas about Kismet and fatalism and the cheapness of human life in comparison to human good. Wrong ideas, from the point of view of the queer, drab, cramped ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... families was sent to the Wolseley settlement, an estate acquired by purchase, about seventeen miles from King William's Town, where full preparations for their reception had been made by a committee. Within two years and a-half the settlement was closed, the cheapness of untaxed drink having changed the settlers from abstainers ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard

... write well, and to calculate sums which were of little practical use to her. Indeed, her head was not unlike the lumber-room of some good lady who has indulged a mania for accumulating purchases simply because of their cheapness, without consideration of their usefulness, whether present or future; so that while she could give you the names and positions and approximate distances of all the principal stars without mistake or hesitation, she would have been utterly at a loss if set to make a little arrow-root or beef—tea ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... Fernando Fe was still fin the Carrera de San Jeronimo, I once heard Blasco Ibanez say with the cheapness that is his distinguishing trait, laughing meanwhile ostentatiously, that a republic in Spain would mean the rule of shoemakers and of ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... more penetrating look from Sheila. The visitor certainly was not Cape bred. Her smart cheapness did not attract Sheila at all. There was something so unwholesome about her that the observer had difficulty in suppressing a shudder. Yet her prettiness was orchidlike. But there are ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... series of attacks upon several different towns, as was at first designed, that the victors, satisfied that they had done enough to convince the red-man of the irresistible superiority of the Long-knife, satisfied, too, perhaps, that the cheapness of the victory rendered it more valuable than a greater triumph achieved at a greater loss, gave up at once their original design of carrying the war into other villages, and resolved to retrace their march to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... he noted that Ernie was flashily dressed, almost to the point of grotesqueness. One might have forgiven the vivid checked suit on the person of a buoyant barber, but it was grewsome in its present occupation. Its gaudy, insistent cheapness leaped out at the observer with much the same appeal for favor that one imputes to the garments of a clown. One might have read the envy in Ernie's soul as his eyes swept the tall, straight, simply clad Southerner who approached. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... matter of fact, as the American reader at least will promptly see, the much more practicable thing is that upper footpath, with these moving platforms beside it, running out over the street after the manner of the viaduct of an elevated railroad. But in some cases, at any rate, the demonstrated cheapness and practicability of tunnels at a considerable ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... mostly boys, who are hourly driven out of the dock gates by the police; nevertheless, they contrive to saunter back, and board the vessels, going among the sailors and privately exhibiting their wares. Incited by the extreme cheapness of one of the razors, and the gilding on the case containing it, a shipmate of mine purchased it on the spot for a commercial equivalent of the price, in tobacco. On the following Sunday, he used that razor; and the result was a pair of tormented and tomahawked cheeks, that almost ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... for them they must be dear to you. Remember what poor Richard says— Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries. And again—At a great pennyworth pause awhile. He means that the cheapness is apparent only, and not real; or the bargain, by straitening thee in thy business, may do thee more harm than good; for in another place he says—Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths. Again—It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... trees of his own, for they are now all private property. If he does not, he has to pay about seven and sixpence for one; and as labour here is five pence a day, the total cost of a year's food for one man is about twelve shillings. The effect of this cheapness of food is decidedly prejudicial, for the inhabitants of the sago countries are never so well off as those where rice is cultivated. Many of the people here have neither vegetables nor fruit, but live almost entirely on sago and a little fish. Having few occupations at home, they wander about ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... favor of a reform of procedure, the power to frame a model code of procedure, which, while preserving all that is valuable and necessary of the rights and remedies at common law and in equity, shall lessen the burden of the poor litigant to a minimum in the expedition and cheapness with which his cause can be fought or defended through Federal ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... and he made himself popular with the inhabitants. Still, the four regiments consisted, to a great degree, of such rough material, that they could not, in the idleness in which they were kept, be controlled. "The soldiers," Andrew Eliot writes, January 29, 1769, "were in raptures at the cheapness of spirituous liquors among us, and in some of their drunken hours have been insolent to some of the inhabitants"; and he further remarks that "the officers are the most troublesome, who, many of them, are as intemperate as the men." Thus, while the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... of fact, in the preparation of many of the cacao products on the market, a wholly different course has been pursued. Beans of poor quality are used, because of their cheapness, and in some instances they are only imperfectly, if at all, shelled before grinding. Chemical treatment is relied on to correct in part the odor and taste of such inferior goods, and artificial flavors, other ...
— Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes • Miss Parloa

... deserves consideration. In many schools the fees begin at a very low figure—eight annas (8d.) a month in the lowest forms and rise to three, four, and even five rupees (4s. 5s. 4d. and 6s. 8d.) a month in the highest forms. It is this initial cheapness which induces so many thoughtless parents to send their boys to secondary schools without having considered whether they can afford to keep them through the whole course, whilst it fosters the notion that badly paid ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... a new Strasburg has sprung up, of which the University is the central feature. A thousand students now frequent this great school of learning, the professorial staff numbering a hundred. One noteworthy point is the excessive cheapness of a learned or scientific education. Autocratic Prussia emulates democratic France. I was assured by an Alsatian who had graduated here that a year's fees need not exceed ten pounds! Students board and lodge themselves outside the University, ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... not the direct cause of the ugliness of our common hymn-books, nor is their ugliness the cause of their cheapness. If many copies of a book are sold, they can be sold cheaply; if only a few, then the initial expense, which is much the same whether the book be beautiful or ugly, must be shared between those few buyers and the ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges

... was the secret demonstration of the cheapness of Jersey prices to the London sewing woman and smart lady's maid, now chafing under Janet Fairbarn's iron rule at the "Banker's Folly." "Norn d'un pipe! But I have to make shameful rabaissements de prix," muttered Jules, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... the case of art and adornment that cheapness is most delightful. The only thing that betrayed a care for beauty on the part of my aunt was her dear old flower garden, and even there she was not above suspicion. Her favourite flowers were tulips, rigid tulips with opulent crimson streaks. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... way, that five or six dollars was all that I ever carried on my person, the rest being in New York drafts, worthless in any hands but mine. And I looked at the time once or twice for him to perceive the cheapness of my nickel watch. That the Bishop was not his father I had indirect evidence when we stopped at Thacher to change horses and drop a mail-sack, and the Mormon divine suddenly lifted the flap and inspected us. He nodded to me ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... and it all matures together. If adopted in the garden, the family has but a few days of berries instead of a few weeks. The marketman may find his whole crop ripening at a time of over-supply, and his small berries may scarcely pay for picking. To many of this class the cheapness of the system will so commend itself that they will continue to practice it until some enterprising neighbor teaches them better, by his larger cash returns. In the garden, however, it is the most expensive method. When the plants are sodded together, the hoe and fork cannot be used. The whole ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... to the court, and beg for help. Callieres saw that there was little hope of more troops or any considerable supply of money; and he laid before the king a plan, which had at least the recommendations of boldness and cheapness. This was to conquer New York with the forces already in Canada, aided only by two ships of war. The blow, he argued, should be struck at once, and the English taken by surprise. A thousand regulars and six ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... west, saints amazed the world with their austerities and self-scourgings and confessions and vigils. But Luther delivered us from all that. His reformation was a triumph of imagination and a triumph of cheapness. It brought you complete salvation and asked you for nothing but faith. Luther did not know what he was doing in the scientific sociological way in which we know it; but his instinct served him better than knowledge could have done; for it was instinct rather than theological casuistry ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... non-free, and the tendency was to use slave-labour more exclusively. The rule that the slave cannot be allowed to be unemployed was a most important factor in the economical development, and drove the landowner, who never seems to have had any doubt about the comparative cheapness of slave-labour,[345] gradually to make his farm more and more independent of all aid from outside. In the work of Columella, written towards the end of the first century A.D., it is plain that the work of the farm is carried on more exclusively by slave-labour than was the ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... work, had found pleasure in doing it and had been well paid for it. But of late years the number of his customers had dwindled considerably, for there had arisen a new generation which cared nothing about craftsmanship or art, and everything for cheapness and profit. From this man and by laborious study and practice in his spare time, aided by a certain measure of natural ability, the boy acquired a knowledge of decorative painting and design, and ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... a clean home, no matter how tiny it be, so that it be wholesome; windows, into which the sun can shine cheerily; a few good books (and who need be without a few good books in these days of universal cheapness?)—no duns at the door, and the cupboard well supplied, and with a flower in your room!—and there is none so poor as not to have about him ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... must remember that there is collected together here a greater number of free human beings than were ever settled on the same space of earth, earning an honest, independent, and sufficient livelihood, and enjoying the fruits of their labour in health and cheapness, freedom and security, such as the world never saw before. There is want and misery. I know it too well. There are great confusions to be organised, great anomalies to be suppressed. But remember, that if want and misery, confusion and anomaly were the rule of London, and not (as they are) ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... demand for them—the growth of the cheese manufacture under the factory system— the increased attention given to root growing in connection with cattle feeding—the care bestowed on more general under-draining—the development of fruit and vine culture, and the excellence and cheapness of your agricultural implements, are all features upon which we may dwell with the utmost satisfaction. Your pasture lands are so wide, and the facilities afforded by the country for the raising of stock are so great, that it will be ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... says: "The Globe Editions are admirable for their scholarly editing, their typographical excellence, their compendious form, and their cheapness." The BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW says: "In compendiousness, elegance, and scholarliness the Globe Editions of Messrs. Macmillan surpass any popular series of our classics hitherto given to the public. As near an approach to miniature perfection ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... reason of the dearness of its produce. On the other hand, a population, the labour of which is insufficiently remunerated, must become physically and morally unhealthy, and socially unstable; and though it may succeed for a while in competition, by reason of the cheapness of its produce, it must in the end fall, through hideous misery and ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... Santo to social festivities, and Professor Ferrucci offered them all the hospitalities of the University library. They had an apartment of four rooms, "matted and carpeted," coffee and rolls in the morning, dinner at the Trattoria, "thrushes and chianti with a marvelous cheapness, no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the prophet Elijah, or the lilies of the field, took as little thought for their dining," writes Mrs. Browning, "and it exactly suits us. At nine we have our supper of roast chestnuts and grapes.... My ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... sugar was first introduced in the middle of the 17th century, and owing to the cheapness of labour, the extreme fertility of the soil and the care bestowed on its cultivation, became the staple product of the island. Cotton growing has recently become of importance. The few other industries include rum distilleries and factories ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... of the world, none of the crimes, sorrows, rhapsodies, or insanities for poor Minnie Marsh; never late for luncheon; never caught in a storm without a mackintosh; never utterly unconscious of the cheapness of eggs. So she reaches home—scrapes ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... that the Asiatic world will, under the same stress, enter the comity of nations, and approximate to the world-type of interest and activity. It is only a question of time. In economic history nothing is more certain than that science, organization, cheapness, and efficiency must ultimately prevail over sporadic, unorganized local effort based on tradition and not on scientific exploitation of natural advantages. Thus the East will adopt the material civilization of the West; and through the ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... at the cost of our own, and for the benefit of such publishers as are willing to convey an English book without paying for it. The reprint of a second-rate work by an English author has not only the advantage of a stolen cheapness over a first-rate one on the same subject by an American, but may even be the means of suppressing it altogether. The intellectual position of an American is so favorable for the treatment of European history as to overbalance in some instances the disadvantages arising ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... artists of the Tosa and Sumiyoshi Academies. Sealed estimates had been required from several leading architects, and Sadanobu surprised his colleagues by awarding the work to the highest bidder, on the ground that cheapness could not consist with true merit in such a case, and that any thought of cost would evince a want of reverence towards the Imperial Court. The buildings were finished in two years, and the two Emperors, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... red wine was given to every one at every table; savoury old-fashioned dishes, vegetables, and fruits were served far more freely and cheaply than they now are, when every dainty is sent by rail to Paris or London, and the drinking of Bordeaux and Burgundy did me much good. Blessed days of cheapness and good quality, before chicory, the accursed poison, had found its way into coffee, or oleomargarine was invented, or all things canned—the world will never see ye more! I have now lived for many months ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... hand; on the end nearest the door were placed the papers for sale. I attribute the success of the Herald to a combination of circumstances—to the peculiar fitness of its editor for his position, to its cheapness, and its advertising patronage, which was considerable. In the fourth place, it early secured the assistance of William H. Attree, a man of uncommon abilities as a reporter and a concocter of pithy as well as ludicrous chapters greatly calculated to captivate many readers. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... service is a model in completeness, cheapness, and dispatch. Switzerland has 800 post-offices and 2,000 depots where stamps are sold and letters and packages received. Postal cards cost 1 cent; to foreign countries, 2 cents, and with return flap, 4. For half-ounce letters, within a circuit of six miles, the cost is ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... they may, for less than they cost; but if you have no occasion for them, they must be dear to you. Remember what Poor Richard says, 'Buy what thou hast no need of, and erelong thou shalt sell thy necessaries.' And again, 'At a great pennyworth pause awhile;' he means, that perhaps the cheapness is apparent only, and not real; or the bargain, by straitening thee in thy business, may do thee more harm than good. For in another place he says, 'Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths.' Again, 'It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase of repentance;' ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... cultivation spreads itself, the amount coming down the Mississippi will be increased almost to infinity. The price of wheat in Europe will soon depend, not upon the value of the wheat in the country which grows it, but on the power and cheapness of the modes which may exist for transporting it. I have not been able to obtain the exact prices with reference to the carriage of wheat from St. Paul (the capital of Minnesota) to Liverpool, but I have done so as regards ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... and over to one,—a New York soul does. It keeps coming back—whispering through all the aisles of thought. New York spreads itself like a vast concrete philosophy over every man's spirit. It reeks with cheapness, human cheapness. How could it be otherwise with a New York man? I never come home from New York, wander through the city with my heart, afterward, look down upon it, see Broadway with this little man on it, fretting up and down between his twenty-story ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... page of our cover will be found the advertisement of "THE NURSERY PRIMER," the most charming book for children, considering its cheapness, that has yet been put upon the market. Look at it, see the beautiful and apt engravings, one or more on every page, and you will want at least a dozen copies to distribute among your little ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... French; but one damsel, confident of success assailed us in whining English, running up and down before her wares, and seizing different objects in quick succession, while continuing to praise their beauty and cheapness. Every shop or stall we passed—and there were a good many—had an inmate more or less importunate, but as what they had to say was very similar, it can be all ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... to eat have been provided by successive generations of chefs who have achieved virtuosity. By and large, the moderation of prices has been a matter of bewilderment to visitors. The cheapness of savory food was one of the outstanding traits of San Francisco, in the opinion of the army of newspaper correspondents attracted to the Democratic national convention in 1920. Maurice Baring, the British author and globetrotter, goes into raptures over the cooking he ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood

... of the bow over the gun are chiefly its noiselessness, its cheapness, and the fact that one can make its ammunition anywhere. As the gun chiefly used in Quonab's time was the old-fashioned, smooth-bore flint-lock, there was not much difference in the accuracy of the two weapons. Quonab had always made a highclass bow, as well as high-class arrows, and was a high-class ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... and long hair cut from the heads of penniless children, were almost as big and as aristocratic as their potential millionaire mistresses. Humbler sisters of middle class combined prettiness with cheapness, and had the satisfaction of showing ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... show an unprecedented decline in the prices of farm products, except in a few articles such as butter, eggs, and poultry, in places where increased population counteracts the tendency to greater cheapness; but this decline is due to increased invention, and the great cheapening ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter

... rhubarb powder, ipecacuanha powder,[2] James's powder; and other simple and compound medicines of great potency, who carry on their diabolical trade on an amazingly large scale. Indeed, the quantity of medical preparations thus sophisticated exceeds belief. Cheapness, and not genuineness and excellence, is the grand desideratum with the unprincipled dealers in drugs ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... of marriage has been defamed in our day, and influences are abroad trying to turn this earth into a Turkish harem or a great Salt Lake City. While the pulpits have been comparatively silent, novels—their cheapness only equalled by their nastiness—are trying to educate, have taken upon themselves to educate, this nation in regard to holy marriage, which makes or breaks for time and eternity. Oh, this is not a mere question of residence or wardrobe! ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... evil results of the present system; certainty of good results from the reform advocated. Present American system contrasted with that of other nations. Services rendered by sundry American diplomatists. Cheapness of our diplomatic establishment compared with its value. Increase of salaries. Summing up of results of all ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... appreciated the cheapness of fruit in California. A big basket of splendid black grapes, which at the cheapest time in London would cost say eight shillings, I bought there for a few cents, say sixpence, and ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... recommended for washing flannels, and calicoes. The above quantity is sufficient for a family of four or five persons for a month, varying slightly as the clothes are more or less soiled. Its cheapness recommends ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... them nasty also; so ignorant that they neither know nor care whether they give a man his due: I know that the manufacturers (so called) are so set on carrying out competition to its utmost, competition of cheapness, not of excellence, that they meet the bargain-hunters half way, and cheerfully furnish them with nasty wares at the cheap rate they are asked for, by means of what can be called by no prettier name ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... while both Heyst and Middelkerke are crowded during the season. But the life at these towns is not so agreeable as at the smaller watering-places. The hotels are too full, and have, as a rule, very little except their cheapness to recommend them. There is usually a body calling itself the comite des fetes, the members of which devote themselves for two months every summer to devising amusements, sports, and competitions of various kinds, instead of leaving people to amuse themselves in their own way, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond

... relation to the Dutch, to the very degree of a prophecy, and is so remarkable that I am resolved to buy one of them, it being quite through a good discourse. Here they did talk much of the present cheapness of corne, even to a miracle; so as their farmers can pay no rent, but do fling up their lands; and would pay in corne: but (which I did observe to my Lord, and he liked well of it) our gentry are ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... acquisitive faculty which lives on pillage, originates nothing itself, and, as a rule, fails to understand, let alone appreciate, originality in others. The young tutor's ambition was to be one of a shining literary clique of extraordinary cheapness which had just then begun to be formed. The taint of a flippant wit was common to all its members, and their assurance was unbounded. They undertook to extinguish anybody with a few fine phrases; and, in their conceited irreverence, they even attacked eternal ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... intrusted to his discretion which to any other man about the court would have proved lucrative, he possessed an income of not more than thirty thousand francs from an investment in the Grand Livre. If we recall the cheapness of government securities under the Empire, and the liberality of Napoleon towards those of his faithful servants who knew how to ask for it, we can readily see that the Baron di Piombo must have been a man of stern integrity. He owed his plumage as baron to the ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... steam to the purposes of travel and transportation, by land and water, has vastly increased the facility, cheapness, and rapidity of both: diffusing, with them, information and intelligence almost as quickly and as freely as if borne by the winds; while the electrical wires outstrip them in velocity, rivaling in ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... without which production would be almost nothing, is subject to a thousand inconveniences, the worst of which is the demoralization of the laborer; machinery causes, not only cheapness, but obstruction of the market and stoppage of business; competition ends in oppression; taxation, the material bond of society, is generally a scourge dreaded equally with fire and hail; credit is necessarily ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... which was the temple, seemed to be surrounded by a circle of watch-fires. These were lighted by Persians from the neighborhood, who were busy burning lime and baking bread, dark forms like those which worked on the tower of Babel, and burnt lime for it. They were now brought here by the ease and cheapness of carrying on their occupations. All that is necessary is to make a hole in the ground, touch a burning coal to it, and an inexhaustible flame rises forth like a spring. Behind this range of little flames and fires, rose, in the pale light, the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... which all the rooms are on the ground-floor. An auctioneer's advertisement often runs—"large weatherboard cottage, twelve rooms, etc.," or "double-fronted brick cottage." The cheapness of land caused nearly all suburban houses in Australia to be built without upper storeys ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... cheery. Who of us does not know the inspiration of a walk in the open air after a few days spent in the close atmosphere of the house? Fresh air is the elixir of life. We can't have too much of it, and—oh, my girls—think of the exceeding cheapness of it! It can be got for the asking, which is more than one can say for the various beauty pomades and lotions that beckon us ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... next morning she re-appeared. "She would not have the new lodger disturbed for the world! He was a Pole. One doubtless of those unfortunate exiles. He had told Mrs. Davies that he was a Polish gentleman desirous chiefly of good air, cheapness, and retirement Beyond a doubt he was one of those unhappy fugitives. He looked grave, and pale, and thoughtful, quite like a hero of romance. Besides, he was the very person who a week before had caught hold of the reins when ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford

... for the use of the Ordnance Department has been regularly and economically applied. The fabrication of arms at the national armories and by contract with the Department has been gradually improving in quality and cheapness. It is believed that their quality is now such as to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... university. Under the Empire their instruction was largely in mathematics, with a sprinkling of Latin. It is now greatly broadened and elevated. The pupils of the primary schools felt a quasi-dependence on the Emperor; those of the lyceums were the very children of patronage, for the cheapness of their education, combined with their semi-military uniforms and habits, impressed at every turn on them and their families the immanence of the Empire. They entered by government examinations; all their letters passed through the head master's ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... that nothing was easier. In the case of Napoleon Bonaparte the nominal fee had to be ten dollars in place of five; but it seemed to me that, if Great-grandfather cost five, Napoleon Bonaparte at ten was cheapness itself. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... too long and too laboriously employed in illustrating every point of the year's history, to lead us to expect any new attraction. Indeed, the preface of the present work does not profess to furnish any such inducement, the editor resting his claim on the cheapness of his book in comparison with the Every-day Book. This is rather an ungracious recommendation: the "Analysis" consists of less than three hundred pages, and is sold for five or six shillings; but these three hundred pages only equal seventy-five pages of the Every-day Book, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various

... reign, galled our fathers so severely that, maddened by intolerable wrong, they opposed to their sovereign a resistance before which her haughty spirit quailed for the first and for the last time? Was it the cheapness and excellence of commodities that then so violently stirred the indignation of the English people? I believe, Sir, that I may with safety take it for granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay



Words linked to "Cheapness" :   tastelessness, inexpensiveness, cheap



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