rip deal
n.— «The most common scam, known as a “rip deal”, originated in France and has spread into Spain. It works like this: people posing as buyers contact you, pretending to be keen to buy quickly, without viewing, no questions asked. They give you some spiel about having to pay the reserve deposit in cash, normally dollars or Swiss francs, which, they argue, you can easily change at the bank. And, since you will have to change the deposit anyway, they ask if you wouldn’t mind advancing them a further amount—€100,000, say—in return for a hefty commission. The next step is a meeting in a swanky hotel somewhere like Barcelona or Milan to do the deal. You return home with a bag full of worthless counterfeit notes.» —“Spanish property doctor: Beware of buyers who flash th ecash” by Mark Stucklin Sunday Times (London, United Kingdom) June 24, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...
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