Also used:
Rip off someone
Rip off something
Ripped off
Rip-off (noun)
Meaning of Idiom ‘Rip (someone) Off’
1. To rip someone off means to steal from them; to cheat or swindle someone financially; to charge someone too much money and not give them something of equal value. This use can also refer to non-persons such as companies, stores, monetary funds, charities, etc.
2. To rip something off, such as a creative work, idea, etc. means to copy it.
3. To be ripped off means to be stolen from, cheated, or swindled.
4. A rip-off, used as a noun, is something that costs much more than it is worth; a scam or fraud; a cheap or bad copy of something.
5. A rip-off artist is someone who cheats or steals from other people, especially by perpetrating scams or frauds (similar to a con artist).
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Examples Of Use
“He ripped off his own father and stole his business.”
“I got ripped off by a used car dealer. He sold me a lemon.”
“My boss accused me of ripping off office supplies. What do I want with office supplies?”
“Online universities, so-called diploma mills, rip people off by selling them worthless degrees.”
“The director has been ripped off the foundation for years. He is under investigation for embezzlement.”
“I have to admit that I ripped off the idea for the script from a movie I saw back in the ’70s.”
“That movie is nothing more than a cheap Alien rip-off.”
“I’m not paying 50 bucks for a t-shirt. What a rip-off!”
“The former president is a rip-off artist. Everything he does is a grift.”
Origin
To rip something off, literally, is to tear it away from something. Most of the figurative uses date from the 1960s, derived from African-American slang and used extensively by the counter-culture or ‘hippie’ movement.
