This week’s theme
To hyphenate or not to hyphenate?

This week’s words
merchant prince
journeyman
gold-digger
roughhouse
body blow

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(GOLD-di-guhr)

MEANING:

noun: One who forms a romantic relationship with a rich person for money.

ETYMOLOGY:

From the metaphorical use of the term for someone who digs for gold. Earliest documented use: 1826 in a literal sense, 1911 in a figurative sense.

NOTES:

In the beginning, the terms gold-digger and gold-miner were synonymous. Then came the metaphorical sense of the term gold-digger, someone forming a relationship for money, instead of love. Originally, a gold-digger was a woman and a gold-miner a man. Traditional boundaries are blurred now.

USAGE:

“Dear Coleen, I’m a divorced woman in my 50s with two grown-up children, who don’t live at home. Before the first lockdown, I met a man I really fell for, although at 39 he’s a lot younger than I am.
“He moved in with me in the summer and we get on really well -- he’s made this whole horrible pandemic much easier and I’m enjoying having him around.
“However, my kids and other members of my family have been negative about it. My daughter called him a gold-digger and my son refuses to have anything to do with him.”
Getting Stick for Seeing Younger Man; Daily Record (Glasgow, UK); Jan 19, 2021.

See more usage examples of gold-digger in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: