English

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Noun

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gold-brick (plural gold-bricks)

  1. (usually attributive) Alternative form of goldbrick
    • 1811, H. W. Hammond, Style-book of business English, page 6:
      Pomposity of style is confined to sellers of spurious goods, whether gold-bricks, medicines, or scholarships.
    • 1906, Harry Houdini, The Right Way to Do Wrong, page 72:
      A species of swindle that has been perpetrated times without number all over this country is the old gold-brick game.

Verb

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gold-brick (third-person singular simple present gold-bricks, present participle gold-bricking, simple past and past participle gold-bricked)

  1. Alternative form of goldbrick
    • 1944, Minnesota PTA Bulletin - Volume 20, Issue 4:
      All of this costs money, but if we all determine to put our own shoulder to the wheel instead of seeing how we can gold-brick we can make Democracy work right here in our own state.
    • 1965, Samuel Feinberg, How Do You Manage?, page 36:
      ... great numbers of “happy employees who are extremely loyal to the organization because they can gold-brick, be apathetic, and be non-involved in worrying about the effectiveness of the company.”
    • 1966, Paul Goodman, Five years, page 197:
      No; any man is likely to be stronger than any institution—a GI can gold-brick the Pentagon.