"goldbrick" meaning in English

See goldbrick in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: goldbricks [plural]
Etymology: From gold + brick, originally (1850s) an actual gold ingot or brick, later a swindle that consisted of selling a putative gold brick, which was only coated in gold. The swindle is attested from 1879, the sense “to swindle” is attested 1902, and the sense “to shirk” is attested 1914, popularized as World War I armed forces slang. In early 1900s, used to refer to an unattractive young woman – not pretty, nor able to talk or dance (attested 1903), thence to refer to incompetent enlisted troops at the start of World War I, reinforced by the rank insignia of second lieutenants, which was a gold rectangle. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|gold|brick}} gold + brick Head templates: {{en-noun}} goldbrick (plural goldbricks)
  1. Something fraudulent or nonexistent offered for sale; a swindle or con. Categories (topical): People
    Sense id: en-goldbrick-en-noun-Tb40-0ez Disambiguation of People: 14 34 6 40 6 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 38 20 25 8 9 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 23 27 33 8 9
  2. (US, slang, dated) A shirker or malingerer. Tags: US, dated, slang Categories (topical): People
    Sense id: en-goldbrick-en-noun--o-hrDB7 Disambiguation of People: 14 34 6 40 6 Categories (other): American English, English entries with topic categories using raw markup Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 23 27 33 8 9
  3. (US, slang, dated) A swindler. Tags: US, dated, slang
    Sense id: en-goldbrick-en-noun-f16mwZQ3 Categories (other): American English, English entries with topic categories using raw markup Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 23 27 33 8 9
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: gold-brick, gold brick

Verb

Forms: goldbricks [present, singular, third-person], goldbricking [participle, present], goldbricked [participle, past], goldbricked [past]
Etymology: From gold + brick, originally (1850s) an actual gold ingot or brick, later a swindle that consisted of selling a putative gold brick, which was only coated in gold. The swindle is attested from 1879, the sense “to swindle” is attested 1902, and the sense “to shirk” is attested 1914, popularized as World War I armed forces slang. In early 1900s, used to refer to an unattractive young woman – not pretty, nor able to talk or dance (attested 1903), thence to refer to incompetent enlisted troops at the start of World War I, reinforced by the rank insignia of second lieutenants, which was a gold rectangle. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|gold|brick}} gold + brick Head templates: {{en-verb}} goldbrick (third-person singular simple present goldbricks, present participle goldbricking, simple past and past participle goldbricked)
  1. (US, slang, dated) To shirk or malinger. Tags: US, dated, slang Categories (topical): People
    Sense id: en-goldbrick-en-verb-ApOLEOF8 Disambiguation of People: 14 34 6 40 6 Categories (other): American English
  2. (US, slang, dated) To swindle. Tags: US, dated, slang
    Sense id: en-goldbrick-en-verb-RRuIUww2 Categories (other): American English
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: gold-brick, gold brick Derived forms: goldbricker

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for goldbrick meaning in English (8.2kB)

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  "word": "goldbrick"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.