gazump
/ɡəˈzʌmp
/verb [with object] British informal
1Make a higher offer for a house than (someone whose offer has already been accepted by the seller) and thus succeed in acquiring the property: the trio are fuming after they were gazumped by a property speculator (as noun gazumping) gazumping has returned, as there is a shortage of good properties...
- Yes, it sounds as if the modern digital cellular service has already gazumped the WiFi network idea.
- That committee finally reported last Friday, but the Government had already gazumped it.
- Whereas gazumping gave sellers the upper hand, allowing them to accept 11 th hour bids above the original offer, gazundering turns the tables on them.
2 dated Swindle (someone): I gazumped a friend of mine with complete success last night...
- Amidst the saccharine clichés, there are lots of uncomfortable moments as she ponders gazumping her client.
Derivatives
gazumper
- In Britain we are the worst gazumpers in Europe, with about one in three buyers falling victim.
- Ward off gazumpers and make vendors feel morally bound to proceed, by keeping in touch with everyone involved.
- When prices are rising so quickly, there's plenty of room for a gazumper to step in and offer the buyer a better deal.
Origin
1920s (in sense 2): from Yiddish gezumph 'overcharge'. sense 1 dates from the 1970s.
These days we associate gazumping with the buying and selling of houses, a use that dates from the 1970s. It now means ‘to raise the price of a house after accepting an offer from a prospective buyer’, but in the early 20th century it simply meant ‘to swindle’, deriving from Yiddish gezumph ‘to overcharge’. In the late 1980s the opposite term gazunder (a combination of gazump and under) was coined to describe the practice of lowering the amount of an offer that the seller has already accepted while threatening to withdraw if the new offer is not accepted.