Word.ws English Dictionary

golden handcuffs

golden handcuffs noun: any arrangement or agreement designed to provide extremely favorable benefits or pay, so as to discourage a participant from choosing to leave it, especially to retain a choice employee in a role that is unpleasant to them.

Noun

golden handcuffs pl (plural only)

  1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) Any arrangement or agreement designed to provide extremely favorable benefits or pay, so as to discourage a participant from choosing to leave it, especially to retain a choice employee in a role that is unpleasant to them.
    • The stock plan really served as golden handcuffs for the executives.

Questions about golden handcuffs

What does golden handcuffs mean?
Golden handcuffs means any arrangement or agreement designed to provide extremely favorable benefits or pay, so as to discourage a participant from choosing to leave it, especially to retain a choice employee in a role that is unpleasant to them.
What part of speech is golden handcuffs?
Golden handcuffs is a noun.

Words near golden handcuffs in the dictionary

  1. golden gudgeon
  2. Golden Gully
  3. golden hammer
  4. golden hamster
  5. golden hamsters
  6. golden handcuffs
  7. golden handshake
  8. golden handshakes
  9. golden hawksbeard
  10. golden hello
  11. golden hellos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: golden handcuffs (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-golden handcuffs.ogg.

Cite this entry: “golden handcuffs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/golden_handcuffs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.