A cheap or inferior product; something of poor quality sold at a low price; also used informally to describe a stingy person.
Cheap plus -o, a suffix borrowed from Spanish and Italian (like 'weirdo'). The -o ending gives it an informal, slangy, slightly derogatory tone.
The -o suffix became trendy in English around the 1960s-70s as slang—we got 'cheapo,' 'weirdo,' 'psycho,' and 'sicko' all in a burst, showing how English borrowed suffix patterns from pop culture and Spanish influence.
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