English

Alternative forms

• gold-brick

Noun

goldbrick ‎(plural goldbricks)

1. A gold brick, especially one that is fraudulent or nonexistent; also used figuratively, a swindle, a 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, 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, 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.

   • c. 1967, Edmund Wilson, quoted in Lewis M. Dabney, Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature, 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 […]

2. (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 circa 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

3. (US slang, dated) A swindler

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
2. (US slang, dated) To swindle

Derived terms

• goldbricker

References

1. 1 2 3 Goldbricking, World Wide Words, Michael Quinion
2. ↑ “goldbrick” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary (2001).