買房遭遇“臨時加價”

我一個朋友前幾天買房的時候遭遇了房主食言毀約(be gazumped)，本來他已經(jīng)和房主商量好了價錢，他也已經(jīng)開始準備搬家了。但是簽合同之前，房主突然(out of the blue)打電話說有人出了更高的價，所以他決定pull out(撤銷口頭協(xié)議等)。我朋友還因此白花了一些錢(out of pocket)，因為他已經(jīng)開始辦理哪些昂貴的法定程序(legal formalities)了。

Gazump意為“抬價敲詐某人(rip someone off)”，但是gazump幾乎只用在房產(chǎn)市場中，而rip off的用途則更為廣泛。例如：

I got gazumped when I tried to buy that house - after we agreed on a price, they changed the contract.

我去買那個房子的時候被房主騙了——本來我們已經(jīng)商量好了價格，可是簽合同的時候，他們就食言了，要改合同。

The drinks in that new bar are a rip off!

那個新酒吧里賣的酒太宰人了。

Peter realized he'd been ripped off when his "new" car turned to have had three previous owners!

當皮特知道他的“新車”原來已經(jīng)有三位舊主人了，他才意識到他被騙了。

“gazump”這個詞來源于猶太語，這種語言是德語和希伯來語的一種混合體，現(xiàn)在英語里面有很多猶太語詞匯，例如下面句子里面這些：

I was hungry so I went out to look for some nosh.

我很餓，所以就出門去看了看有什么吃的。

I bought a bagel and a coffee from the schmuck who owns the shop on the corner.

我在街角那家店買了一個百吉餅和一杯咖啡，那家店的老板很遜。

He gave me some spiel about a computer he had for sale. Everyone knows the guy is a klutz and that any computer of his would be full of glitches.

他極力向我推銷店里賣的一臺電腦。大家都知道那個人笨手笨腳的，他的電腦肯定有一堆小毛病。

If I was going to buy a computer I'd have a schmooze with my friend Danny. He's a real mensch and knows everything about information technology.

如果我打算買臺電腦，我會跟我朋友丹尼聊聊的。他人很好，而且對這些信息技術(shù)方面的東西很在行。