Almighty dollar
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Almighty dollar is an idiom often used to satirize an obsession for material wealth (the phrase implies that money is a kind of deity). The phrase is commonly attributed to Washington Irving, who used it in the story "The Creole Village", which was published in the November 1836 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine:
- "The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the inhabitants may remain in their present state of contented poverty."
Edward Bulwer-Lytton is credited with coining the related phrase "pursuit of the almighty dollar", which he used in the novel The Coming Race, published in 1871.
[edit] References
Look up almighty dollar in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
- Origins of Sayings: "The Almighty Dollar", Trivia-Library.com, accessed on June 14, 2005
