Other forms: cheapened, cheapening, cheapens
To cheapen is to lower the value or the dignity of something. Cheapen the brand, it cheapens the whole thing, cheapened by repetition.
The figurative sense is the commoner and is always a complaint, since cheapening something devalues it without lowering any price. The literal sense of making goods cheaper is now rare.
1verbcheapenTo lower the value or the dignity of something.
“Putting adverts on the war memorial would cheapen it.”
cheapen is a lowering.
Proto-West Germanic
*kaup
Old English
cēap — trade, market, value
Middle English
chep
English
cheap
English, today
cheapen
Built from
From cheap + -en. cheap As a noun, from Middle English chep, from Old English cēap (“trade, market, value”), from Proto-West Germanic kaup. As a verb, from Middle English chepen, from Old English ċēapian (“to buy, bargain, trade”), from Proto-West Germanic kaupōn, from Proto-Germanic kaupōną, a verbal derivative of kaupô (“trader”), from Latin caupō. The adjective originated as a shortening of Middle and Early Modern English good cheap, literally “good purchase” (as in “that was good cheap”, i.e. “that was [a] good purchase”). Compare goedkoop, bon marché. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA