goldbrick

plural goldbricks · alternative gold-brick · alternative gold brick

1. Something fraudulent or nonexistent offered for sale; a swindle or con.

   Experience is the biggest gold brick in the world. All older people have it for sale.

   1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Smart Set, January 1920, collected in Tales of the Jazz Age

   4 more examples

   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, Rafael De Nogales, Memoirs Of A Soldier Of Fortune, Kessinger Publishing, published 2006, →ISBN, page 98

   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 — […]

   1932, Harper's Magazine, volume 166, page 520

   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.

   1945, in the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration Bulletin, Volumes 422–433, page 5

   […] 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 […]

   c. 1967, Edmund Wilson, quoted in Lewis M. Dabney, Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature, Macmillan (2005), page 485

2. USdatedslangA shirker or malingerer.

   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 goof-off, no good But that couldn’t be all that I am

   2004 (written c. 1990), Howard Ashman, Aladdin: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, “Proud of your Boy”

   1 more example

   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.

   1945, Dr. Charley Haly, quoted in Doc: heroic stories of medics, corpsmen, and surgeons in combat by Mark R. Littleton, p. 68

   Synonyms: goldbricker

3. USdatedslangA swindler.

   Synonyms: goldbricker

present singular third person goldbricks · participle present goldbricking · participle past goldbricked · past goldbricked · alternative gold-brick · alternative gold brick

1. USdatedslangTo shirk or malinger.

   I'd just as soon goldbrick with malaria as with anything else.

   1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 173

   1 more example

   He learned to despise the Germans, people he once thought fit to rule the world, but now so craven they ate French dirt for a glass of cheap campagne; he mastered the art of goldbricking. Sitting at his desk, bored and full of hate, he got fat and dreamed of Paris.

   1989, Greil Marcus, “The Assault on Notre-Dame”, in Lipstick Traces, Faber & Faber, published 2009

2. USdatedslangTo swindle.