Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A person, especially a soldier, who avoids assigned duties or work; a shirker.
- v. To shirk one's assigned duties or responsibilities.
- v. To cheat; swindle.
Wiktionary
- n. A gold brick, especially one that is fraudulent or nonexistent; also used figuratively.
- n. US slang, dated A shirker or malingerer
- n. US slang, dated A swindler
- v. US slang, dated To shirk or malinger
- v. US slang, dated To swindle
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. slang an idle worthless person.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a soldier who performs his duties without proper care or effort
- v. avoid (one's assigned duties)
- n. anything that is supposed to be valuable but turns out to be worthless
- n. an idle worthless person
- v. deprive of by deceit
- n. a brick-shaped block that looks like gold but is not
Etymologies
- gold + brick, originally (1850s) an actual gold ingot or “gold brick/goldbrick”, later a swindle that consisted of selling a putative goldbrick, which was only coated in gold. The swindle is attested from 1879, the sense “to swindle” is attested 1902, and the sense “to shirk” is attested 1914, popularized as World War I armed forces slang. In early 1900s, used to refer to an unattractive young woman – not pretty, nor able to talk or dance (attested 1903), thence to refer to incompetent enlisted troops at the start of World War I, reinforced by the rank insignia of second lieutenants, which was a gold rectangle. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Such activities might have included producing vituperative TV ads calling a decorated-war-hero senator a goldbrick, or sponsoring hysterical Web sites accusing the president's father of being King Faisal's fifth wife.”
“I was getting goldbrick looks from the men working at their desks, so I went back to my cubicle.”
“Real work started to seem like a life sentence, so he dealt with it by becoming a goldbrick.”
“I treasure that ball like a goldbrick, till one day when I was tossin it aroun in the yard, a big ole dog come up an grap it outta the air an chewed it up.”
“True enough, assignments do not all have the same level of work requirement, and one is sometimes handed a wide open opportunity to goldbrick.”
The Armed Forces Officer Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2
“I do not feel hard toward goldbrick men and "blue sky" venders.”
“I reckon I'll take along some of the new income tax receipts, and the recipe for making clover honey out of clabber and apple peelings; and the order blanks for the McGuffey's readers, which afterwards turn out to be McCormick's reapers; and the pearl necklace found on the train; and a pocket-size goldbrick; and a-- ”
“Caniff, but he's a hard-drinking, womanizing goldbrick whose mother, Malory Jessica Walter, runs the financially struggling ISIS, which stands for International Secret Intelligence”
“The political class can force people to pay taxes without offering any public services in return, as pensions and retirement benefits, benefits for todays 'seniors (but no tomorrow's), interest on debts, patronage and seniority goldbrick jobs are retained even as public services disappear.”
“Still, the unit routinely scores a below-30\% satisfaction rating on customer surveys, in part because they are surly, know nothing, and goldbrick with the impunity of the unionized.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘goldbrick’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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I Am A Starfish. I Speak With Paint.
List title totally stolen from she. Right, the stock entry for this list should be a two-word phrase where one of the words denotes a colour; even better if the expression has some metaphoric value...
black dog, tangerine dream, orange roughy, blue moon, blackguard, white house, purple rain, grey nurse, green thumb, yellow fever, sacre bleu, palo verde and 159 more...
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New words
new words or spelling issues
voluble, Metagrobolize, salubrious, calumny, fugacity, withdrawal, bourse, hypertrophy, leitmotif, argot, improvident, damask and 241 more...
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Metallics
Words that relate to or describe metals.
malleable, ductile, shiny, steely, brassy, dull, golden, precious, smelt, smith, tensile, clink and 39 more...
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kalidas's Words
crepuscular, mellifluous, ephemeral, diaphanous, zeitgeist, geisterfahrer, infinite, eternal, idyllic, azure, reminiscent, oblivion and 521 more...
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Gaw
Words for things both tangible and anthropic. I'm in the process of spinning off hardware into ute, and people into oofy.
cum-twang, naumachia, yngling, juggernaught, bliss ninny, iliac crest, moistened bint, slumlord, spondoolies, classy lady, charnel house, electrodoméstico and 334 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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found in Fuentes
Words found in books by Carlos Fuentes, as translated by Sam Hileman.
nickelodeon, stipendiary, dipsomaniac, bonhomie, goldbrick, Lower Empire Posture, lissome, gabardine
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waste of time and money
fritter, twiddle, squander, fidget, bric-a-brac, claptrap, clutter, lollygag, spendthrift, dawdle, boondoggle, thriftless and 22 more...
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Words I can't find a use for...yet.
sneck, goldbrick, obtund, piloerection, redintegrate, dephlogisticate, deipnosophist, jacquerie, mercurialize, Pseudepigrapha
Tweets
Looking for tweets for goldbrick.

bilby "Many workers are fed up with work. There are high and rising rates of absenteeism, turnover, employee theft and sabotage, wildcat strikes, and overall goldbricking on the job. There may be some movement toward a conscious and not just visceral rejection of work."
- Bob Black, The Abolition of Work, 1985. Oct 24, 2011