Dictionary

goldbrick

Noun

goldbrick (plural goldbricks)

Something fraudulent or nonexistent offered for sale; a swindle or con.
- 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Smart Set, January 1920, collected in Tales of the Jazz Age:
  Experience is the biggest gold brick in the world. All older people have it for sale.
- 1932, Rafael De Nogales, Memoirs Of A Soldier Of Fortune, Kessinger Publishing (2006), ISBN 9781428658349, page 98 ↗:
  These, as a rule, were not adverse to buying a goldbrick as long as they knew that there was a chance for them to dump it on somebody else afterwards with some profit.
- 1932, in Harper’s Magazine, Volume 166,^{[http://books.google.com/books?id=EvkvAAAAMAAJ ]} page 520:
  To-day, American attitude toward Europe is comparable to that of the country greenhorn who, having bought a goldbrick on Broadway, now fills the air not merely with the denunciation of the sharpers who tricked his credulity — […]
- 1945, in the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration Bulletin, Volumes 422–433,^{[http://books.google.com/books?id=WfIRAAAAYAAJ ]} page 5:
  The average farmer may be less of a victim than some other people by reason of his isolation, conservatism, and hard earned money, but he, too, has too often bought a goldbrick that did not materialize.
- circa 1967 Edmund Wilson, quoted in Lewis M. Dabney, Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature,^{[http://books.google.com/books?id=FgucGWGxOIoC ][http://www.amazon.com/Edmund-Wilson-Literature-Lewis-Dabney/dp/0374113122 ]} Macmillan (2005), ISBN 9780374113124, page 485:
  […] that if he bought a goldbrick from Podhoretz for $25,000, he ought to pay me more than the $5,000 a volume that had been agreed on for the pure gold […]
(US slang, dated) A shirker or malingerer.
- 1945, Dr. Charley Haly, quoted in Doc: heroic stories of medics, corpsmen, and surgeons in combat by Mark R. Littleton, p. 68 ↗
  Mac, there’s not a confounded thing wrong with you. You are an excellent physical specimen and in good health. You’re nothing but a goldbrick. Now, get your butt out of here and don’t ever come back again unless you’re really sick or need an immunization.
- 2004 (written circa2 1990), Howard Ashman, Aladdin: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, “Proud of your Boy”:
  Tell me that I’ve been a louse and loafer
  You won’t get a fight here, no ma’am
  Say I’m a goldbrick, a good-off, no good
  But that couldn’t be all that I am
(US slang, dated) A swindler.

Verb

goldbrick (goldbricks, present participle goldbricking; past and past participle goldbricked)

(US slang, dated) To shirk or malinger.
(US slang, dated) To swindle.

This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004