Mammon

See also: mammon

English
WOTD – 13 September 2016
Mammon and His Slave, a c. 1896 engraving by Sascha Schneider

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Late Latin mammona (“wealth”), from Hellenistic Ancient Greek μαμωνᾶς (mamōnâs), from Aramaic מָמוֹנָא‎ (māmōnā, “money, wealth”). Compare Hebrew מָמוֹן‎ (mamón, “money”).

Pronunciation

Noun

Mammon (uncountable)

  1. The desire for wealth personified as an evil spirit or a malign influence.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981, Matthew 6:24:
      No man can ſerue two maſters: for either he will hate the one and loue the other, or elſe hee will holde to the one, and deſpiſe the other. Ye cannot ſerue God and Mammon.
    • 1857 November, “The Present Panic”, in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, volume XXIV, Edinburgh: William Tait, OCLC 1607056, page 644:
      They [bankers] would do what has been done by the Bank of France—buy bullion at a premium, on the approach of danger, and keep peril at a safe and respectable distance. Any expenditure that might be incurred for that purpose would be small indeed when contrasted with the immense loss and suffering caused by the present system, and the continual fear in which the public now live of some new crisis—because it has been out of one and into another for a long period now; and that will be the case hereafter, until we have no interval to gather strength, and recruit for the next struggle with Mammon, or Moloch, or whatever other name of evil import belongs to the "Tutelarity" of Lombard-street and its precincts.
  2. Often mammon: wealth, material avarice, profit.
    • 2008, Edwin [B.] Mullins, The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile, New York, N.Y.: BlueBridge, →ISBN, page 43:
      The proper sphere of the church, after all, was the kingdom of God, not greedy earthbound kingdoms of mammon, which should be left to temporal authorities to rule and squabble over.
    • 2009 January 19, Michael McNay, “Andrew Wyeth: Realist painter whose work was much loved by the US public but divided the critics [obituary]”, in The Guardian‎, London, archived from the original on 16 March 2016:
      But he [Andrew Wyeth] did not want to become an all-American illustrator like the Post's illustrious Norman Rockwell – and he had heard his own father, an illustrator, bemoan choosing the path of mammon rather than the path of virtue, and declined.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Further reading

German

Pronunciation
  • Audio(file)

Noun

Mammon m (genitive Mammons, no plural)

  1. Mammon
  2. (colloquial) money
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