golden calf
2
8.1
- noun
- /ˈɡoʊldən kæf/
:
becerro de oro
- Many people treat money as a golden calf, putting it above all else.
Examples
-
To this task, theologians and others must turn if liberation is not to end in the worship of a golden calf.
Academic text (1990) -
Moses called such answers idolatry, and among us, there is also a way of worshiping the golden calf as though it had led the people of the German Democratic Republic into reunification.
Academic text (1992) -
If you had come out of Egypt, you would have been destroyed in the desert with all those who worshipped the golden calf.
-
Then again, during this post-Vatican II era in the Church, we have largely turned our back on Him and now worship the golden calf of Modernism.
Blog text (31) -
Ignore these principles—turn toward the golden calf—and the scourge will come.
Academic text (2008) -
In the pursuit of success, he found himself worshipping the golden calf of material possessions.
-
The extravagant lifestyle was his golden calf, distracting him from more meaningful pursuits.
Synonyms
330
1.0
A very valuable quality or thing, often used about people
3
9.9
Money treated like a god that people worship instead of important things
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
golden + calf
The sense of 'golden calf' comes from a specific biblical story of idolatry and requires cultural knowledge to map the literal 'golden' + 'calf' onto 'an object worshipped or valued excessively (esp. money)'. A B1 learner who only knows the constituent words would most likely read it literally as a calf made of gold and would not reliably infer the idiomatic meaning, so the idiomatic sense is not predictably compositional.
Etymology
Golden calf comes from the Bible, where people made a young calf from gold and bowed to it as if it were a god. That's why today calling something a golden calf means people 'worship' it or 'value it too much', especially money or other things.