gold

pronunciation

How to pronounce gold in British English: UK [ɡəʊld] word uk audio image

How to pronounce gold in American English: US [ɡoʊld] word us audio image

Noun:

coins made of gold
a deep yellow color
a soft yellow malleable ductile (trivalent and univalent) metallic element; occurs mainly as nuggets in rocks and alluvial deposits; does not react with most chemicals but is attacked by chlorine and aqua regia
great wealth
something likened to the metal in brightness or preciousness or superiority etc.
Adjective:

made from or covered with gold
having the deep slightly brownish color of gold

Word Origin

gold: gold: [OE] Gold gets its name from its colour. The perception of what this is has varied. In the ancient Germanic languages, red was often used as a poetic epithet for ‘gold’, and in English this survives into the present day as an archaism. And Latin aurum ‘gold’, source of French or and Italian and Spanish oro, is probably related to words for ‘dawn’ (such as Latin aurora), the inspiration in both cases being ‘redness’.The word gold, however, depends on the metal’s yellowness. It goes back to Indo-European *ghel-, source of English yellow. From this was formed *ghltom ‘gold’, which was the ancestor of Russian zoloto ‘gold’, Polish złoto (whence złoty ‘golden’, used as the name of a Polish coin), Sanskrit hiranya- ‘gold’, and the various Germanic words for ‘gold’: English and German gold, Dutch goud, and Swedish and Danish guld. Golden [13] is a Middle English derivative of gold, replacing the earlier gilden, which came from Old English gylden.Of related forms in other Germanic languages, Dutch gulden is the source of the former coin-name guilder [15]. The verb gild, from Old English gyldan, retains its original vowel; gilt [14] began life as its past participle.=> gall, gild, gilt, guilder, yellow

gold (n.): "precious metal noted for its color, luster, malleability, and freedom from rust or tarnish," Old English gold, from Proto-Germanic *ghl-to- (cognates: Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old High German gold, German Gold, Middle Dutch gout, Dutch goud, Old Norse gull, Danish guld, Gothic gulþ), from PIE root *ghel- (2) "to shine," with derivatives referring to bright materials, yellow colors, bile, and gold (compare Old Church Slavonic zlato, Russian zoloto, Sanskrit hiranyam, Old Persian daraniya-, Avestan zaranya- "gold;" see glass (n.)). Finnish kulta is from German; Hungarian izlot is from Slavic.

gold (adj.): c. 1200, from gold (n.); compare golden. In reference to the color of the metal, it is recorded from c. 1400. Gold rush is attested from 1859, originally in an Australian context. Gold medal as first prize is from 1757. Gold record, a framed, gold phonograph record to commemorate a certain level of sales, is from 1948. Joe Grady and Ed Hurst, WPEN disk jockey team, will be given a gold record by Mercury of the one-millionth copy of Frankie Lane's waxing of That's My Desire, January 10, for having done so much to plug the platter in these parts [Philadelphia]" [Billboard, Jan. 10, 1948]

adj.