mammonism
Americannoun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of mammonism
Explanation
Mammonism is the greedy pursuit of material riches: chasing money and wealth above all else. The word mammon comes from the Hebrew word for "money," and it is famously used in the Bible in a quote usually translated as "You cannot serve both God and mammon." Over time, literary traditions personified Mammon as a demon of avarice who tempted people through greed. But mammonism doesn't usually mean the literal act of worshipping this hypothetical demon; instead, it just means an obsession with material gain and the accumulation of riches.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Mammonism has gained hold of the United States today.
From Time Magazine Archive
What if to the Mammonism of America be added the rising Mammonism of the re-born South, and the Mammonism of this South be reinforced by the budding Mammonism of its half-wakened black millions?
From The Souls of Black Folk by Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
Working Aristocracy A poor Working Mammonism getting itself 'strangled in the partridge-nets of an Unworking Dilettantism,' and bellowing dreadfully, and already black in the face, is surely a disastrous spectacle!
From Past and Present by Carlyle, Thomas
Gospel of Mammonism Heaven and Hell, often as the words are on our tongue, got to be fabulous or semi-fabulous for most of us.
From Past and Present by Carlyle, Thomas
Certainly it were a fond imagination to expect that any preaching of mine could abate Mammonism; that Bobus of Houndsditch will love his guineas less, or his poor soul more, for any preaching of mine!
From Past and Present Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. by Carlyle, Thomas
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
