Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also bat) a confidence game in which the victim buys a ’gold’ (actually gold-painted lead) brick; also attrib.; thus goldbrick game.

1881		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 24 Dec. 10/2: [heading] The Gold Brick Trick. [Ibid.] The gold brick swindle is an old one but it crops up constantly [...] The bar, or brick as it is called,..is really of base metal. One corner, however, is of gold.
1893		M. Philips Newspaper 76: I am working the gold-brick game [...] I can tell you at least how we did up an old cockatoo here to-day for seventeen thousand dollars.
1898		Binstead & Wells Pink ’Un and Pelican 254: The very lowest characters of both sexes — bunco-steerers, gold-brick fabricators, sandbaggers, and, worse than all, if that be possible, the alien dagos from Italy and Spain.
1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 39: What’s his game [...] Is it gold bricks or green goods?
1909		I.L. Nascher Wretches of Povertyville 211: The gold brick game, one of the most profitable swindles known, has been worked ever since the California gold miners returned to New York with lumps of gold in the early fifties.
1911		Hawaiian Star (Honolulu) 13 May 18/2: Higher class [...] confidence men such as gold brick or pay-off racetrack poolroom swindlers [...] are still at the old game of borrowing money on checks.
1919		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 22 Mar. 9/2: Captain the Hon. Alured Blank, A.D.G. (who later got three years for a remarkably amateurish variation of the gold-brick swindle).
1927		H. Asbury Gangs of N.Y. 194: The gold brick game, perhaps the most celebrated of all swindles.
1930		A. Carey Memoirs of a Murder Man 7: Grand Central Pete, who sold gold bricks to farmers arriving at railroad depots.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con 298: The gold brick An obsolescent con game in which a sucker bought what appeared to be a genuine gold brick from a farmer or Indian. Also the bat.
1952		C. Hamilton Men of the Und. 164: The green goods game took the place of the gold brick swindle as the trademark of the confidence man.
1961		(con. c.1950) R. Poole London E1 (2012) 15: The con-men who sold one gold brick too many.
1966		M. Braly It’s Cold Out There (2005) 197: Laying the note went out with gold bricks.

2. (US campus) an unattractive, dull girl or woman.

1902		N.Y. Tribune 2 Nov. 37/2: A girl who is not pretty and cannot talk or dance is known as a ‘gold brick’.
1905		Wash. Post 15 Jan. 4/3: The application of the term ‘gold brick’ to every girl who can neither talk, dance, nor look pretty.

3. (US Und.) a swindle; anything bogus.

1900		Ade More Fables in Sl. 180: He began to think that in making any Outlay for Lutie’s Vocal Training he had bought a Gold Brick.
1909		W. Irwin Confessions of a Con Man 160: ‘Gold brick’ had already become slang for a bunco game; and when that happens you might as well quit.
1925		Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 209: I may be a back number, but I can still tell a goldbrick with my eyes closed.
1932		(con. 1917–19) Dos Passos Nineteen Nineteen in USA (1966) 499: This whole goddam war’s a gold brick, it ain’t on the level.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

4. (also goldbricker) a swindler.

1902		C.L. Cullen More Ex-Tank Tales 85: He was the top-notch gold-bricker of his own or any other age.
1937		(con. WW1) E.C. Parsons Great Adventure 239: ‘What’s the matter with you birds up here? Why don’t you get more Boches? My gosh, [...] I’m going out and show you goldbrickers something .
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1956		‘Toney Betts’ Across the Board 114: A poor relative he put on the payroll as a Comeback Money Man, a goldbrick.

5. attrib. use of sense 4.

1940

E. O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into Night II ii: Let that flannel mouth, gold-brick merchant sting you with another piece of bum property!

6. (US, also goldbricker) a malingerer, a loafer, a lazy person.

1911		‘Sing Sing No. 57,700’ My View on Books in N.Y. Times Mag. 30 Apr. 5/5: She [...] There’s a dinge scrapper in it [...] He’d make [...] the rest of the chamois-pushers look like goldbricks .
1927		(con. 1914–18) L. Nason Three Lights from a Match 139: And so we retreat in confusion, do we? And here are all the goldbricks!
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 87: Gold Brick. – Anyone who shirks or malingers.
1944		D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 123: A series of scribes about the different types [...] of Goldbrickers.
1948		(con. 1944) N. Mailer Naked and Dead 186: Jesus, you guys are a bunch of goldbricks.
1953		L. Uris Battle Cry (1964) 104: Spanish Joe Gomez was the biggest thief, liar and goldbricker in the Marine Corps.
1958		(con. 1950) E. Frankel Band of Brothers 260: Some goldbricks in your squad, Firesteen. Get ’em going.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 801: goldbricker – One who shirks or malingers.
1962		(con. WWII) J.O. Killens And Then We Heard The Thunder (1964) 40: He was no hero, he was a shirker and a goldbrick.
1975		M.S. Mayer Nature of the Beast 32: You would suppose, and so would I, that a man so unsupervised and unanswerable, so overpaid and underworked, would be a guiltless gilt-edged goldbricker.
1978		S. Longstreet Straw Boss (1979) 274: Be right down, you goldbrick. Order me a double Chivas Regal.
1982		W. Wharton Midnight Clear 88: If goldbricks like us get to heaven, he’s taking his chances with the devil.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 175: goldbrick. An idler; one who tries to get out of doing his share of the work.
1995		B. Jacobs Dentist of Auschwitz (2001) 79: Even though he was a malingerer and a goldbricker, the foremen generally liked him.
2000		W.T. Vollmann Royal Family 741: Vagabonds, goldbricks, self-destroyers, sojourners [etc.].
2011		‘Jack Tunney’ Cutman [ebook] I had things to do and I knew the cap’n wasn’t one for tolerating goldbrickers.

7. attrib. use of sense 6.

1920		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 34: How about your grandpa the gold brick king. Oh dry up.
1987		C. Hiaasen Double Whammy (1990) 79: Decker tweezered another black-and-white of the goldbrick fireman out of the fixer.

8. one who obtains money without working for it.

1966		D. Ward Day of Absence in Black Drama 197: Track down that lazy goldbricker.
1983		(con. 1970) S. Wright Meditations in Green (1985) 160: In any other war Wendell Payne would have been instantly recognizable as the goldbrick with the thick money belt (easy loans to close friends at special interest).