gold-diggern.
/ˈɡəʊl(d)ˌdɪɡə/, U.S. /ˈɡoʊl(d)ˌdɪɡər/ 1. A person who digs for gold.
ΘΚΠ
society > occupation and work > worker > workers according to type of work > manual or industrial worker > miner > [noun] > one who mines metals > goldminer
gold miner1717
river digger1806
gold-digger1826
gold worker1848
digger1853
reefer1859
goldfielder1898
placer1921
1826 Carolina Observer (Fayetteville, N. Carolina) 30 Aug. We have not ascertained how much gold this earth yields to the bushel; but the gold diggers say it is very rich.
1830 Cherokee Phoenix (New Echota, Georgia) 24 Mar. 3/3 There are tippling shops on every hill where these gold diggers are collected.
1889 K. Munroe Golden Days i. 3 He was better fitted to be a gold-digger than anything else.
1948 O. Weston Mother Lode Album 28 Savage and his party of Indian gold diggers encamped under a big oak.
1954 A. Koestler Invisible Writing xix. 218 I had been done in..as thoroughly and completely as a choir-boy in a gold-digger town.
1986 Guardian 12 Aug. 19/6 Serra Pelada..is reached by an earth road through the jungle. Barriers allow only authorised gold-diggers and visitors through.
2010 K. Werthmann in U. Freitag & A. von Oppen Translocality 114 Gold digging in Burkina Faso is pursued..as a full-time occupation by professional itinerant gold diggers.
2. figurative. colloquial (originally U.S.). A person (originally and esp. a woman) who forms a romantic or sexual relationship with another person (typically a man), purely to obtain money or other gifts.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > emotion > love > love affair > [noun] > female lover seeking financial gain
gold-digger1916
1916 J. Lait Beef, Iron & Wine iii. 77 Now don't get me wrong. I'm no gold digger.
1918 Munsey's Mag. Feb. 60 She's a gold-digger, that one. If she got anything like that on me, she'd wring me dry as a bone.
1928 Observer 15 Apr. 5/5 Our own Becky Sharp is an innocent compared with the ‘gold-digger’, who is now a stock character of American fiction.
1961 M. Zellerbach Love in Dark House iv. 52 ‘No, I don't like him... He's a gold digger.’ ‘Is he digging after your mother's gold?’
1998 Gay Times Aug. (Classified Ads section) 22/5 Come fly with me by sending full letter/phone/photo. Your real thoughts, no gold-diggers.
2010 Vanity Fair May 206/3 They were surrounded by all these star-banging gold diggers.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2018; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1826