Word.ws English Dictionary

bad money drives out good

bad money drives out good proverb: debased coinage (with low levels of precious metals) replaces purer coinage (with higher levels of precious metals).

Proverb

bad money drives out good

  1. Debased coinage (with low levels of precious metals) replaces purer coinage (with higher levels of precious metals).
  2. People hoard good currency and other assets and attempt to pass inferior currency and assets to others in exchange.
  3. (figuratively) Overvalued mediocre talent replaces undervalued real talent.

Origin of bad money drives out good

Traditional sentiment, both in literal and metaphorical sense, dating to ancient works such as Aristophanes' The Frogs, and appearing in various forms in various Islamic and European medieval texts.

Questions about bad money drives out good

What does bad money drives out good mean?
Bad money drives out good means debased coinage (with low levels of precious metals) replaces purer coinage (with higher levels of precious metals).
What part of speech is bad money drives out good?
Bad money drives out good is a proverb.

Words near bad money drives out good in the dictionary

  1. bad manners
  2. bad medicine
  3. Bad Mergentheim
  4. bad mind
  5. bad money
  6. bad money drives out good
  7. bad moneys
  8. bad mood
  9. bad moods
  10. bad name
  11. bad names

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bad money drives out good (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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