Word.ws English Dictionary

Faustian bargains

Faustian bargains is the plural of Faustian bargain.

Meaning of Faustian bargain

Noun

Faustian bargain (plural Faustian bargains)

  1. (idiomatic) An agreement in which a person abandons his or her spiritual values or moral principles in order to obtain knowledge, wealth or other benefits.
    • The university’s abandonment of its founding value of academic freedom in exchange for the corporation’s large financial contribution was a Faustian bargain.
  2. (idiomatic) A deal in which one focuses on present gain without considering the long-term consequences.
    • It has been remarked that all technology is a Faustian bargain: one obtains conveniences and sometimes luxuries, but in exchange one gets an increased potential for catastrophe.1974 October, Joel Primack, Frank von Hippel, “Nuclear Reactor Safety: The Origins and Issues of a Vital Debate”, in Samuel H. Day, Jr., editor, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, volume XXX, number...

Questions about Faustian bargains

What is Faustian bargains the plural of?
Faustian bargains is the plural of Faustian bargain.

Words near Faustian bargains in the dictionary

  1. faussebrayes
  2. Fausset
  3. Faust
  4. Faustian
  5. Faustian bargain
  6. Faustian bargains
  7. Faustian deal
  8. Faustian dilemma
  9. Faustianly
  10. Faustianness
  11. faustiest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Faustian bargains (page history and authors); Faustian bargain (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Faustian bargains.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/faustian_bargains. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.