Meaning
Business jargon for a product, division or asset that reliably generates more cash than it costs to maintain, its surplus typically diverted to fund riskier or faster-growing ventures; more loosely, any dependable source of easy income that is exploited rather than developed. The extended sense is common outside business pages, in sport, entertainment and government. Neutral-to-cynical business register; the milking metaphor implies extraction from an asset past its growth phase. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The metaphor is a dairy cow that needs little further investment yet keeps producing milk that can be drawn off, so a mature business can be 'milked'. The business sense was fixed by the Boston Consulting Group's growth-share matrix: sketched by BCG's Alan Zakon and popularized by founder Bruce Henderson in his 1970 Perspectives essay 'The Product Portfolio', it sorted units into stars, question marks, dogs and cash cows - high-market-share operations in slow-growing markets to be milked continuously with minimal investment. Merriam-Webster dates the compound's first known use to 1972 and records both the portfolio sense and the generalized 'reliable source of money' sense, which now often carries a hint that the owner is exploiting a captive asset rather than earning it.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a real cash cow
- cash cows
- milking the cash cow
Usage Examples
- The insurance division became the group's cash cow, quietly funding every speculative side project.
- Executives admitted that the printing business was now a cash cow and would receive no further investment.
- That single licensing deal turned an old advertising jingle into a cash cow for two retired musicians.