gilded cage

Cultural  

1. To be like “a bird in a gilded cage” is to live in luxury but without freedom: “Because the movie star could not go out without being recognized and pursued, she stayed in her penthouse, living like a bird in a gilded cage.”

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gilded cage Idioms  

1. The encumbrances or limitations that often accompany material wealth, as in She had furs, jewelry, whatever money could buy, but was trapped in a gilded cage. This metaphoric expression indicating that riches cannot buy happiness was popularized (and possibly coined) in a song, “A Bird in a Gilded Cage” (1990; lyrics by Arthur J. Lamb, music by Harry von Tilzer), about a young girl marrying for wealth instead of love and paying for luxury with a life of regret.

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Example Sentences

Before the speech, his allies had said he was craving interaction with people outside the gilded cage of the White House.

From New York Times • Mar. 8, 2024

Living in the White House, he said, is “a little like a gilded cage in terms of being able to walk outside and do things.”

From Seattle Times • Jan. 12, 2023

The first is a story about a pair of parrots living in a gilded cage, losing all of their purple feathers.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 15, 2022

"I feel really sorry for them, because in many ways they're born into a gilded cage that has isolated them from reality," he told the BBC in 2015.

From BBC • May 3, 2022

Hers was a gilded cage, but it was a cage nonetheless.

From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman