Word.ws English Dictionary

cheapdate

cheapdate proper noun: a certain mutant strain of fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) with heightened sensitivity to ethyl alcohol (ethanol), causing it to lose postural control at lower concentrations of the drug.

Proper noun

cheapdate

  1. (always italicized) A certain mutant strain of fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) with heightened sensitivity to ethyl alcohol (ethanol), causing it to lose postural control at lower concentrations of the drug.
    • One X-linked mutation isolated in this screen was named cheapdate (chpd) to reflect the increased ethanol sensitivity displayed by hemizygous mutant male flies.1998 June 12, Monica S. Moore et al., “Ethanol Intoxication in Drosophila: Genetic and Pharmacological Evidence for Regulation by the cAMP Signaling Pathway”, in Cell, volume 93, number 6, page 998

Origin of cheapdate

Coined by Monica S. Moore et al. in 1998 (see 1998 quotation), from “cheap date”, the idea being that it is less expensive to buy an evening's worth of drinks for a person with a lower tolerance for alcohol. (Fruit-fly mutants are frequently given whimsical names.)

Questions about cheapdate

What does cheapdate mean?
Cheapdate means a certain mutant strain of fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) with heightened sensitivity to ethyl alcohol (ethanol), causing it to lose postural control at lower concentrations of the drug.
What part of speech is cheapdate?
Cheapdate is a proper noun.

Words near cheapdate in the dictionary

  1. cheap-shotting
  2. cheap-skate
  3. cheap-skates
  4. cheapass
  5. cheapasses
  6. cheapdate
  7. cheaped
  8. cheaped out
  9. cheapen
  10. cheapen out
  11. cheapened

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cheapdate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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