London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good evening to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
And here’s your London fix for this fine day in October.
Monday, October 6th, 2025.
Ann stopped by here yesterday and sure enough served up a Googly. Ann, inventor of the world’s first cat tour. And up until a week ago or so, when feline fans went on the prowl on a cat tour in Brighton Ann’s was the only cat tour in the world. Well, that Brighton kitten means it’s now got company in the cat cave now. But it still is the only catty history walk in the world.
Anyway, instead of cats, Ann surprised us with a piece about dogs.
A timely reminder for me that I’m really a doggy person. I think it’s fair to say there’s something dogged about my determination. And from time to time I can be a bit of a Pointer – aka English Pointer. I’ll take it, they’re great dogs. Graceful, athletic and bred to “point” out game birds to hunters. They’re the aristocrat of the sporting dogs – elegant, tireless and born to find the birds. No raised eyebrows about that last word, please.
And, yes, bears repeating, I gladly take ownership of that. I’m something of a Pointer when it comes to a great London find. Or a great London story.
And the same trait comes out in relation to words. After all, my London Walks bio reads: “broods over words, breeds enthusiasms and is unmanageable.”
You can couple that characteristic with the following truism: the more you know about something the more interesting it becomes.
So sometimes I’m like a Pointer when it comes to an individual word. Happened today. There it was, the Metro headline: Thump the gazumpers! Sure my Pointer instincts came out and paired right up with my instinct that clamoured, “I think I better have a sniff around that word “gazump” – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that word turns out to be a corker, wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s fascinating linguistic history there.
So sure enough, I started digging. When did the word come along? Where’d it come from? Etc. etc. Drew a blank with one of my principal etymological sources. It didn’t list the word at all. Closest it came was galumph. Which is a wonderful word in its own right. It means “to prance about in a self-satisfied manner.” And of all people, we have Louis Carroll, of Alice in Wonderland fame to think for that fine word ‘galumph.’ He coined it in 1871 in Jabberwocky, his nonsensical poem tucked into Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. Turns out galumph is a blend of ‘gallop’ and ‘triumph’.
But I digress. Our word today – the word that brought out my Pointer instincts – the word that’s galumphing across the front page of the Metro – is ‘gazump.’
And here’s what I’ve come up with. I’m confident you’ll agree, the more you know about the word gazump the more interesting it becomes.
Whaddaya say, shall we see what the bird Gazump looks like? Pointer David’s doing some serious pointing so maybe he’s tracked down something special.
Hey ho and off we go.
Turns out that 1) gazumped is a comparative stripling. It first pitches up in this rich language of ours in 1928.
And even better, it’s a very London word.
You’ve been gazumped.
Ouch, it even sounds cruel, doesn’t it?
That zump at the end – that’s a punch in the ribs, a door slammed in your face, the fizz going out of the champagne you’d just put on ice.
Gazumped!
You thought you’d bought the house – you’d told your mum, you’d measured the curtains – and then, poof! Someone’s slipped in with a higher offer and the seller’s taken it.
It’s a peculiarly British agony, and a peculiarly London one. And it’s wrapped up in one of the oddest, most unforgettable words in the English language.
So. Where on earth did gazump come from?
Let’s start in the East End. 1920s. Petticoat Lane on a Sunday morning – hawkers shouting, traders bantering, the air thick with frying onions, cockney patter and Yiddish slang.
Gazump – or as it sometimes appeared, gazumph – was market talk. Jewish traders’ talk. From Yiddish, meaning to overcharge, to cheat, to swindle.
You could be gazumped over a hat, a horse, or a second-hand watch. It didn’t have anything to do with houses back then – it was just another bit of the musical, inventive, hybrid slang of East London: English shot through with Yiddish rhythm and Hebrew roots.
Linguists think it may come from a Yiddish word gezumph, which in turn might be linked to the Hebrew gezem – “robbery”. You can hear the family resemblance. Gazumph. Gezem. Grab. It’s all there – the sense of taking someone for a ride.
And that “zump” sound – marvellous, isn’t it? You can almost see the con trick happen in that single syllable. Zump! Like the trapdoor springing shut.
Fast-forward half a century. Britain in the 1970s. Inflation roaring. Prices rising faster than anyone could print estate-agent window cards.
Enter gazump, reborn.
By 1971, newspapers were using it with its modern meaning – to raise the price of a house after having already agreed to sell it to someone else. By 1976, The Times was lamenting the “epidemic of gazumping” sweeping London.
Of course it was London – where else? The city where fortunes are made and lost in bricks and mortar. Where “location, location, location” isn’t advice, it’s a creed.
The old Yiddish market slang had found a perfect new playground: the cut-throat, cash-flashing, queue-jumping London property scene.
And because this is London, and Londoners never miss a chance to play with words, gazump soon spawned a whole family of cheeky cousins.
First came gazunder.
If gazumping is the seller shafting the buyer, gazundering is the buyer’s revenge – dropping their offer at the last minute, just before exchange of contracts. “We’ll still buy it,” says the buyer, all innocence, “but not for £600,000 – let’s make it £550,000, shall we?”
It’s from the same stock of playful London humour: gazump (up) – gazunder (down). Up one, down the other.
And then, in the 1980s boom years, the lexicon got even more riotous.
You could be gazanged – the seller pulls out because prices are shooting up so fast they decide to wait for a better offer.
Or gazouch – a brief tabloid darling that meant a deal fallen through due to bad luck rather than bad faith.
Even gazundered and gazumped at the same time – the full London nightmare. The buyer drops their offer while another swoops in with a higher bid. A property purgatory.
By the 1990s the words had multiplied like estate-agent flyers through a letterbox. Gazump, gazunder, gazang, gazouch. They sound almost cartoonish – you can picture them marching across the front page of the Evening Standard with little speech bubbles.
But behind the comedy there’s something deadly serious: they capture the peculiar British madness of buying a house.
Because – and this always astonishes Americans – until the exchange of contracts, a British property deal isn’t legally binding. It’s all done on trust. A handshake, a promise, and then weeks of lawyers, surveys, searches… plenty of time for a cheeky “zump” to slip in.
It’s very English, really – they pride themselves on fair play, on their word being their bond – and then, when the heat’s on, they find creative new ways of wriggling out of it.
Gazumping is the moment that the dream home turns back into a street address. The moment you discover that estate agents aren’t saints and that moral outrage doesn’t get you the keys.
But I love it that gazump itself has such rich history. It’s London through and through.
It begins in the East End, in the rhythm of Yiddish speech. It grows up in the boom years of London property. It’s been on the lips of traders, then agents, then journalists, then everyone with a mortgage.
It’s a survivor – like schlep and chutzpah and spiel – a Yiddish lodger that settled happily into English.
And it still does its job perfectly. You only have to say it – gazump! – and you know exactly what it means. You can feel the sting of it. The sound does the work.
So next time you hear the word on the street – or in the pub, or from the lips of an apologetic estate agent – remember: it’s more than just property jargon. It’s a time capsule.
A word that travelled from the markets of the East End to the drawing rooms of Kensington. From a Yiddish trader’s shout to the headline of The Times. From stall to solicitor’s office.
And it’s still going strong, nearly a century later – that comic, cruel, utterly London word:
Gazump.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com home of London Walks, London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do to attract and keep the best guides in London – you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating: the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative – is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from – – home of London Walks, London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do to attract and keep the best guides in London – you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating: the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative – is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals.
By way of example, Stewart Purvis CBE, the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts..
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians, university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)… well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.