mammon

Proper noun capitalized: Mammon

Mammon

1. The desire for wealth personified as an evil spirit or a malign influence.
   • No man can ſerue two maſters: for either he will hate the one and loue the other, or elſe hee will holde to the one, and deſpiſe the other. Ye cannot ſerue God and Mammon.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 6:24
   • They [bankers] would do what has been done by the Bank of France—buy bullion at a premium, on the approach of danger, and keep peril at a safe and respectable distance. Any expenditure that might be incurred for that purpose would be small indeed when contrasted with the immense loss and suffering...1857 November, “The Present Panic”, in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, volume XXIV, Edinburgh: William Tait, →OCLC, page 644
2. Often mammon: wealth, material avarice, profit.
   • The proper sphere of the church, after all, was the kingdom of God, not greedy earthbound kingdoms of mammon, which should be left to temporal authorities to rule and squabble over.2008, Edwin [B.] Mullins, The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile, New York, N.Y.: BlueBridge, →ISBN, page 43
   • But he [Andrew Wyeth] did not want to become an all-American illustrator like the Post's illustrious Norman Rockwell – and he had heard his own father, an illustrator, bemoan choosing the path of mammon rather than the path of virtue, and declined.2009 January 19, Michael McNay, “Andrew Wyeth: Realist painter whose work was much loved by the US public but divided the critics [obituary]”, in The Guardian, London, archived from the original on...

   Synonyms:

   money, wealth