| 释义 |
rip-off, n. (and a.) slang (orig. U.S.).|ˈrɪpɒf|
Also rip off, ripoff.
[f. to rip off s.v. rip v.2 6.]
1. One who steals, a thief.
1970Manch. Guardian Weekly 2 May 16/4 ‘Who do you have on Haight Street today?’ he [sc. a San Francisco drug peddler] said disgustedly... ‘You have burn artists (fraudulent dope peddlers), rip-offs (thieves), and snitchers (police spies).’ 1971Rolling Stone 24 June 8/3, I call them rip-offs, and they are, nothing but pirates and vultures.
2. A fraud, a swindle; a racket; an instance of exploitation, esp. financial.
1970Melody Maker 12 Sept. 29 Rip off, capitalist exploitation. 1970Time 21 Dec. 4/1 This is what, in contemporary parlance, is called a rip-off. 1971It 9–23 Sept. 12 Fun Caterers of Battersea..had the main catering concession (the biggest rip-off there.) 1973Houston (Texas) Chron. 21 Oct. 7/3 Dunlop said the increased spring markups had been ‘inflationary’, a polite word in the context for ‘ripoff’. 1974Sunday Sun (Brisbane) 28 July 24/2 The great snackbar rip-off that had city workers weeping into their salad rolls. 1975N.Y. Times 14 Apr. 30/4 A five-day week, with ten paid holidays, plus a ten-week paid vacation yearly. Such a contract is a ‘rip-off’. 1977Time 4 July 21/1 They [sc. French soldiers and civil servants] get rich and Djibouti gets nothing. That's not enlightened colonialism. It's a bloody rip-off. 1980Times 31 May 2/3 Britain's 41 motorway service areas..have attracted such accolades as ‘poor’, ‘appalling’ and ‘a rip-off’.
3. An imitation or plagiarism, usu. one made in order to exploit public taste.
1971Newsweek 18 Oct. 38/3 Most of the architecture is Inspired Bastard, most of the historical re-creations are Shameless Ripoff. 1974Publishers Weekly 4 Mar. 72/2 This kaleidoscopic fantasy, a ripoff on everything from spy novels to the Oedipus complex. 1976Time (Canada) 19 Jan. 16/3 Flynt runs three Hustler Clubs in Ohio, tacky rip-offs of the Playboy Clubs, offering expensive drinks and leggy ‘hostesses’. 1977Private Eye 1 Apr. 4/1 Blue Belle [sc. a film], yet another of the seemingly endless Emmanuelle rip-offs. 1980Jewish Chron. 29 Feb. 30/2 We were treated to a kaleidoscopic mess of fifties rip-offs, sixties platitudes and seventies mistakes; shirtwaisters, minis, halter-necks, op art, sloppy joes, bermudas and, latest ubiquity, the flying suit.
4. a. attrib. passing into adj.
1971National Times (Austral.) 15–20 Feb. 1/3 In Sydney comics and books have been appearing from the ‘rip-off’ press—the underground printers and publishers who are printing editions of banned books sneaked singly through Customs. 1973Nation Rev. (Melbourne) 24–30 Aug. 1399/6 The poor unfortunate buyer getting lumbered..with the cost of the device (at ripoff prices). 1973National Observer (U.S.) 6 Oct. 23/3 The ‘rip-off’ blues, the blues that musicians get when they write songs that make other people rich and leave them poor as before. 1975Time 12 May 17/1 The rip-off capital of the world [sc. Saigon]. 1976New Yorker 5 Apr. 31/2 Cargo leaving New York for places like South America is often a kind of object lesson in rip-off economics. 1976Times 11 June 8/1 The trade in old books is an incongruous mixture of fine art almost beyond price and the rascally hustle and rip-off hugger-mugger of a flea market.
b. Comb., as rip-off artist, merchant, one who carries out a rip-off; a thief, fraud, or racketeer.
1971Frendz 21 May 11/2 Rip-off artists are only occasionally armed or violent; more usual is..the traditional con⁓man. 1971J. Mandelkau Buttons xiii. 149 From now on my club was going to have nought to do with the Alternative society and its rip-off merchants. 1974Amer. Speech 1970 XLV. 210 Bring your own food. There won't be any ripoff merchants there. 1977It May 5/2, I am not suggesting that the Pink Floyd are rip-off artists, but it is undeniable that much contemporary music is a response to alienation. 1977C. McFadden Serial xxxix. 84/2 He checked out the chain lock that secured his Motobecane against rip-off artists. |