Word.ws English Dictionary

gazump

Syllables: ga·zumpUK/ɡəˈzʌmp/US/ɡəˈzʌmp/

gazump verb: to swindle; to extort.

Verb

gazump (third-person singular simple present gazumps, present participle gazumping, simple past and past participle gazumped)

  1. (UK) To swindle; to extort.
  2. (Australia, UK) To raise the selling price of something (especially property) after previously agreeing to a lower one.
    • If one believes that morality plays no part in such a transaction, and that the law is all that prevails, then I believe society is the poorer. Clearly no surveyor refuses to act for a client who gazumps — but while the practice is legal it can hardly be described as moral, and the position of the...1980, The Estates Gazette, volume 256, part 2, page 902
    • During the early 1970s however in a period of rapidly increasing house prices it came to appear unfavourable to buyers since it allowed the seller to ‘gazump’, that is to refuse to sign the formal contract unless the buyer would agree to an increased price.1981, Geoffrey Chevalier Cheshire, M. P. Furmston, Cecil Herbert Stuart Fifoot, Cheshire and Fifoot's Law Of Contract, page 35
  3. (Australia, UK) To buy a property by bidding more than the price of an existing, accepted offer.
    • I can disclose that Mrs Blair had an offer of £2,765,000 accepted on a five-storey Georgian house in a fashionable area of central London, which she planned to give to daughter Kathryn.¶ However, actress Talulah Riley, 31, who played spoiled Annabelle Fritton in two St Trinian’s films, gazumped her...2017 March 15, Sebastian Shakespeare, “Cherie Blair is gazumped on £3m house by Elon Musk's ex-wife”, in The Daily Mail
    • We are first-time buyers going through the process of buying our first home in London. We had previously tried three years ago and were gazumped twice. We lost nearly £4,000 to surveyors and solicitors with no property to show for it at the end.2017 October 22, Nana Prempeh, quoting Nick Smith, “Gazumping: Your views”, in BBC News
  4. (Australia, UK) To trump or preempt; to reap the benefit underhandedly from a situation that someone else has worked to create.
    • The tactic was to gazump the Labour Party and the FOL by a major restructuring of the tax system.1995, Hugh Templeton, All Honourable Men: Inside the Muldoon Cabinet, 1975-1984, page 107
    • Just as Whymper effectively gazumps Mr Stone in taking credit for the Knights Companion scheme for ambitious ends, so too does this dangerous, multicultural, overcrowded version of London seem to be displacing the colonial fantasy of England by the novel's conclusion.2004, John McLeod, Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis, page 72

Noun (1)

gazump (plural gazumps)

  1. (Australia, UK) The act of gazumping.

Noun (2)

gazump (plural gazumps)

  1. (US, dated, slang) An automobile.
    • "Phoney" Thorpe, '06, and "Shorty" Winchester, '01, have been driving their "90 HP Gazumps" through the wilds of New Jersey, but otherwise keeping on the job.1884, Theta Delta Chi, “The Shield: official publication of the Theta Delta Chi Fraternity”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 27, page 335
    • Go out and hire the finest gazump that ever burned benzine.1915, Francis Joseph Reynolds, Master tales of mystery, volume 1, page 373
  2. A politician who takes bribes.
    • This year's crop of "nite bloomin' wood-be mayors" includes such famous gazumps as Mac Hoyne, Tom Carey, Barney Mullaney, possibly Carter H., Wilhelm Thompson, and the devil knows who else.1918, The National provisioner, volume 59, page 36
    • Go fifty-fifty. / If they nail you call in a mouthpiece. / Fix it, you gazump, you slant-head, fix it. / Feed 'em. …1920, Carl Sandburg, “Cahoots”, in Smoke and Steel, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, →OCLC, page 45

Forms of gazump

Verb
third-person singular presentgazumps
present participlegazumping
past participlegazumped
pastgazumped
alternative formgazoomph
alternative formgazumph
Noun
pluralgazumps

Origin of gazump

Possibly from Yiddish גזלן (gazlen, “thief, bandit”).

Words formed from gazump

Words that rhyme with gazump

18 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gazump

What does gazump mean?
Gazump means to swindle; to extort.
What part of speech is gazump?
Gazump can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce gazump?
Gazump is pronounced /ɡəˈzʌmp/ (UK).
What is the past tense of gazump?
The past tense of gazump is gazumped.

Words near gazump in the dictionary

  1. gazoos
  2. gazoz
  3. gazpacho
  4. gazpachos
  5. Gaztambide
  6. gazump
  7. gazumped
  8. gazumper
  9. gazumpers
  10. gazumph
  11. gazumphed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gazump (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 gazump.ogg.

Cite this entry: “gazump.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gazump. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.