CULTURETECHLENSgold digger
STRONG EVIDENCE evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)
Combined Graph record U-00720 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-W-0319. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.
Grammarphobia (fetched in full), citing the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang: a 'gold digger' is 'a woman who associates with or marries a man solely for his wealth.' Citing the OED and Barry Popik's research: earliest figurative use in Rex Beach's novel The Ne'er-Do-Well (copyrighted 1910, published 1911); further early use in Jack Lait's Beef, Iron and Wine (1915-16); popularized by Avery Hopwood's play The Gold Diggers (1919) and the 1929 film Gold Diggers of Broadway. (The literal mining sense is in print from 1830, per the OED.)
Answer summary · this record in brief, from its own record text
Grammarphobia (fetched in full), citing the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang: a 'gold digger' is 'a woman who associates with or marries a man solely for his wealth.' Citing the OED and Barry Popik's research: earliest figurative use in Rex Beach's novel The Ne'er-Do-Well (copyrighted 1910, published 1911); further early use in Jack Lait's Beef, Iron and Wine (1915-16); popularized by Avery Hopwood's play The Gold Diggers (1919) and the 1929 film Gold Diggers of Broadway.
The record
- Work type: phrase
Sources
- https://grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/08/the-gold-diggers-of-broadway.html (verification source · master store)
Evidence note (master store)
Grammarphobia (fetched in full), citing the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang: a 'gold digger' is 'a woman who associates with or marries a man solely for his wealth.' Citing the OED and Barry Popik's research: earliest figurative use in Rex Beach's novel The Ne'er-Do-Well (copyrighted 1910, published 1911); further early use in Jack Lait's Beef, Iron and Wine (1915-16); popularized by Avery Hopwood's play The Gold Diggers (1919) and the 1929 film Gold Diggers of Broadway. (The literal mining sense is in print from 1830, per the OED.)
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Record CTL-W-0319 · Combined Graph record U-00720 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 1 source.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.
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Chicago: CultureTechLens. “gold digger (CTL-W-0319).” CultureTechLens Combined Graph. Chicago, IL: CultureTechLens, 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-w-0319/
APA: CultureTechLens. (2026). gold digger (CTL-W-0319) [Entity record]. CultureTechLens Combined Graph. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-w-0319/
MLA: CultureTechLens. “gold digger (CTL-W-0319).” CultureTechLens Combined Graph, 2026, https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-w-0319/
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