gouge
to scoop, cut out, or overcharge
Root
- gouge: scoop, chisel, cut out, or hollow
Gouge begins with a cutting tool; the price sense feels like cutting money out of someone.
The store gouged customers after the storm by doubling the price of water.
A gouge can be a rounded chisel or the hollow mark it leaves. The figurative word keeps that violence: to gouge a customer is to carve out more money than fairness allows.