Gold Definition: Meaning, Examples, and Exercises

Define “gold” by exploring how people naturally mention it when talking about jewelry purchases, gifts and personal style preferences in daily life.

While this term is unique, these related things to how to say “gold” will help you discuss precious metals and luxury accessories more effectively.

Related nouns: metal jewelry treasure precious metal

Synonyms (contextual): none, it is a specific noun

Common collocations: gold jewelry gold chain gold ring

Strengthen your vocabulary by learning these natural combinations that describe gold types, colors and accessory styles.

With adjectives: pure gold white gold yellow gold rose gold

With verbs: wear gold buy gold polish gold sell gold

With nouns (noun + noun): gold necklace gold earrings gold bracelet gold watch

These expressions will add richness to your language skills and help you understand how “gold” in English symbolizes value and success.

• Worth one’s weight in gold — extremely valuable, useful, or highly appreciated.

  A good friend who listens to your problems is worth their weight in gold.

• Heart of gold — a very kind, generous, and good-natured person.

  My neighbor always helps everyone in need — she has a heart of gold.

• Gold digger — (negative) a person who dates someone only for their money or expensive gifts.

  His friends warned him that his new girlfriend might be a gold digger.

• Strike gold — to suddenly become successful, find something very valuable or have unexpected luck.

  This small startup is striking gold because its app went viral overnight.

• Good as gold — very well-behaved, reliable and trustworthy (often said about children).

  The kids were as good as gold during the entire wedding ceremony.

Evaluate your understanding of vocabulary, phrases with “gold” and various expressions with our interactive intellectual game.

Discover how to spell “gold” and pronounce it across different languages and cultures around the world.

Gold jewelry has fascinated humans for millennia and these surprising details reveal why it remains the ultimate luxury accessory material.

• Gold never tarnishes or corrodes.

  Unlike silver or other metals, pure gold will never rust, tarnish, or corrode, which is a good reason for jewelry discovered in ancient tombs to shine just like it was just made. This longevity makes gold jewelry good for keeping as heirlooms to pass down from generation to generation.

• Gold purity is measured in karats.

  Pure gold has a 24-karat (24K) configuration, however, it cannot be used for everyday jewelry as it is too soft. The most common gold used is 14K (58.3% gold) or 18K (75%) gold, which implies that the other metals are present in the mix to make the piece stronger.

• White gold isn’t naturally white.

  To create white gold, yellow gold is alloyed with white metals such as palladium or nickel and then coated with rhodium. In the course of usage, the rhodium plating will get eroded and so the piece of jewelry will have to be plated again to keep up with the bright white look.

• Gold leaf is incredibly thin.

  Gold is so ductile that an ounce of it can cover a space of 300 square feet. The gold leaf that is being used in art, architecture and even food goes up to the thinness of 0.0001 millimeters and even light can be seen through it.

• Olympic gold medals aren’t pure gold.

  In contrast to what their name suggests, today’s Olympic gold medals consist of only approximately 6 grams of gold plating over silver. The last pure gold Olympic medals were presented in 1912. Today medals are 92.5% made of silver, with a minimum of 6 grams of gold.

Listen to what famous figures have said about “gold’s” enduring appeal and its symbolic meaning beyond material value.