Word.ws English Dictionary

almighty dollar

almighty dollar noun: the dollar, satirically characterized as a god.

Noun

the almighty dollar

  1. (US, derogatory, idiomatic, singular, singular-only) The dollar, satirically characterized as a god.
    • The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the inhabitants may...1836, Washington Irving, The Creole Village, in Knickerbocker Magazine (November 1836), later re-published in Wolfert's Roost's and Other Papers (1855)

Origin of almighty dollar

Most sources hold this to be a coinage of Washington Irving, alluding to "Almighty God", although a Philadelphia newspaper also used the phrase at approximately the same time and Ben Jonson had used "almighty gold" in 1616 in Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland.

Questions about almighty dollar

What does almighty dollar mean?
Almighty dollar means the dollar, satirically characterized as a god.
What part of speech is almighty dollar?
Almighty dollar is a noun.

Words near almighty dollar in the dictionary

  1. almightiful
  2. almightily
  3. almightiness
  4. almightinesses
  5. almighty
  6. almighty dollar
  7. almightyship
  8. alminoprofen
  9. almiqui
  10. almiquis
  11. almira

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: almighty dollar (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-almighty dollar.ogg.

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