Gold-Digger

My husband and I recently watched the BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1944 novel Towards Zero. During the course of the drama, one of the characters states sadly that she’d been accused of not marrying her husband for love but because she’s a “gold-digger”. Hearing the word made me wonder when its figurative use began.

The OED cites “gold-digger”, with its original meaning of someone who digs for gold, as first being recorded in 1826. It wasn’t for another ninety years, though, that it began to be used figuratively for someone, initially a woman, who seeks a relationship with another person in order to obtain money or other desirable possessions. This means that by the time Dame Agatha was writing Towards Zero, the term was well established and a woman could find herself accused of the crime. I’m not going to tell you if the character in question was justly labelled, though; you’ll have to watch the drama or read the book yourself to find out.