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A goldbrick is a person who stays away from work, especially by pretending to be ill. It is casual American slang, and a bit old now — you will meet it more in older books and army stories than in a Taiwan classroom. As a verb, to goldbrick is to do that: to dodge the job. Though actually, the word did not start with lazy people. In the 1850s a gold brick was a real block of gold. Then, from about 1879, cheats sold a gold brick that was only coated in gold. From 1902 it meant to cheat someone; from 1914, in the First World War, soldiers used it for people who avoided work. In the early 1900s it also named a young woman seen as plain and awkward, and then weak soldiers, helped along by the gold rank badge of second lieutenants. Today's meaning — the person who dodges work — grew out of that army talk.
裝病偷懶的人（美式口語，偏舊）
組成gold + brick. First a real gold block; later a fake one used in a cheat; later still a person who dodges work.
同家族的字
- gold-platedthe old cheat sold a brick that was only coated in gold, not solid gold
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
goldbricknoun
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Something fraudulent or nonexistent offered for sale; a swindle or con.
- Experience is the biggest gold brick in the world. All older people have it for sale.
- These, as a rule, were not adverse to buying a goldbrick as long as they knew that there was a chance for them to dump it on somebody else afterwards with some profit.
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datedslangA shirker or malingerer.
- Mac, there’s not a confounded thing wrong with you. You are an excellent physical specimen and in good health. You’re nothing but a goldbrick. Now, get your butt out of here and don’t ever come back again unless you’re really sick or need an immunization.
- Tell me that I’ve been a louse and loafer You won’t get a fight here, no ma’am Say I’m a goldbrick, a goof-off, no good But that couldn’t be all that I am
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datedslangA swindler.
goldbrickverb
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datedslangTo shirk or malinger.
- I'd just as soon goldbrick with malaria as with anything else.
- He learned to despise the Germans, people he once thought fit to rule the world, but now so craven they ate French dirt for a glass of cheap campagne; he mastered the art of goldbricking. Sitting at his desk, bored and full of hate, he got fat and dreamed of Paris.
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datedslangTo swindle.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。