Why do you insist on using an imprecise word? Does it matter that the majority of users express themselves badly? Why do you not try to articulate yourself well?
Ah, come on Brendan! The word is certainly imprecise - the vast majority of words are. So why do
you insist on using it? Why don't you just say 'fraud' instead of ripoff, if that's what you mean. Does it not matter that many listeners will think you are referring to high prices or being taken advantage of/exploited, when that's not what you mean at all?
Why do you not try to articulate yourself well?
If someones says to me that a place is a rip-off, I will have to continue to ask them which version of the word they are using. It would be much simpler and would give rise to much fewer misunderstandings, if they used "rip-off" to convey fraud and "exceedingly expensive" to mean, well, exceedingly expensive.
If someones says to me that a place is a rip-off, I will have to continue to ask them which version of the word they are using, or maybe I'll just be able to take the meaning from the context in which it's used. It would be much simpler and would give rise to much fewer misunderstandings, if they used "rip-off" to convey exceedingly expensive and "fraud" to mean, well, fraud.
The dictionary definitions do reflect the misuse of the word.
No, just its evolving use.
Perhaps the OED will follow suit shortly.
I've got the OED 2nd edn (1989) entry for rip-off in front of me now. This is what it says:
rip-off, n. (and a.)
slang (orig. U.S.).
1. One who steals, a thief.
1970 Manch. 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).’ 1971 Rolling 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. 1970 Melody Maker 12 Sept. 29 Rip off, capitalist exploitation. 1970 Time 21 Dec. 4/1 This is what, in contemporary parlance, is called a rip-off. 1971 It 9-23 Sept. 12 Fun Caterers of Battersea..had the main catering concession (the biggest rip-off there.) 1973 Houston (Texas) Chron. 21 Oct. 7/3 Dunlop said the increased spring markups had been ‘inflationary’, a polite word in the context for ‘ripoff’. 1974 Sunday Sun (Brisbane) 28 July 24/2 The great snackbar rip-off that had city workers weeping into their salad rolls. 1975 N.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’. 1977 Time 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. 1980 Times 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. 1971 Newsweek 18 Oct. 38/3 Most of the architecture is Inspired Bastard, most of the historical re-creations are Shameless Ripoff. 1974 Publishers Weekly 4 Mar. 72/2 This kaleidoscopic fantasy, a ripoff on everything from spy novels to the Oedipus complex. 1976 Time (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’. 1977 Private Eye 1 Apr. 4/1 Blue Belle [sc. a film], yet another of the seemingly endless Emmanuelle rip-offs. 1980 Jewish 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.
1971 National Times (Austral.) 15-20 Feb. 1/3 In Sydney comics and books have been appearing from the ‘rip-off’ presshttp://dictionary.oed.com/graphics/parser/gifs/sp/em.gifthe underground printers and publishers who are printing editions of banned books sneaked singly through Customs. 1973 Nation Rev. (Melbourne) 24-30 Aug. 1399/6 The poor unfortunate buyer getting lumbered..with the cost of the device (at ripoff prices). 1973 National 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. 1975 Time 12 May 17/1 The rip-off capital of the world [sc. Saigon]. 1976 New 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. 1976 Times 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. 1971 Frendz 21 May 11/2 Rip-off artists are only occasionally armed or violent; more usual is..the traditional con~man. 1971 J. 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. 1974 Amer. Speech 1970 XLV. 210 Bring your own food. There won't be any ripoff merchants there. 1977 It 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.
That was 7 years ago. Like bankrupt, I've no doubt that a new edition will go even further.
That will not reduce the misunderstandings caused by your insistence on using a word to mean two different things, one of which is criminal in nature and the other of which is not.
How many misunderstandings of this kind actually occur? It seems to me that the majority of people, in the majority of cases, are capable of determining from the context whether someone using the word ripoff means fraud or excessively/exploitatively expensive. In fact, I can't think of a single discussion here on AAM where someone has said, "I'm confused... Do you mean fraud or excessively expensive?" On the contrary, most discussions have included something along the lines of:
Poster 1: I see you've used the word 'ripoff'. I understand perfectly that you mean 'excessively expensive', but please don't use it that way; you're wrong.
Posters 2, 3, 4...: No he's not wrong. That's a perfectly valid meaning.
Because there's a
context surrounding the word's use, the meaning becomes evident. Like the gay = happy/homosexual example above. Or, to move a little closer to your criminal/non-criminal distinction, if someone told me, "The garda booked the stripper," I expect I'd know from the context whether they meant the garda arrested the stripper for indecent exposure or the garda engaged the stripper to perform at his mate's stag night.
