Word of the Day for Thursday, February 16, 2012
mammonism \MAM-uh-niz-uhm\, noun:
The greedy pursuit of riches.
We will bring to mind a young man or young woman bitterly awakened from a fancy dream of accomplishment, action or glory, forced instead to come to terms with a considerably reduced status, a betrayed love, and a hideously bourgeois world of crass mammonism and philistine taste.
-- Rudyard Kipling, Kim
Claiming mutual “affection and confidence” with his collaborating reader whom he expects to agree, Dickens also indicts the false religion of Mammonism.
-- Linda M. Lewis, Dickens, His Parables, and His Readers
Mammonism is an odd combination of Aramaic and Greek. The word mammon meant wealth in Aramaic, and the suffix -ism forms a noun from a verb, as in criticism and plagiarism.
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