Meaning
A source of easy money or benefits that demands little effort, often with the implication that the rewards are excessive, cushy or undeserved. It nearly always appears in patterns like 'ride the gravy train' or 'the gravy train has dried up'. Informal and typically disapproving; originally American, now used across all major varieties of English. Informal and usually disapproving, implying the rewards are unearned or excessive. Regional use: General English.
Origin
American slang of the late 19th century. The noun 'gravy' had been developing a slang sense of easy gains - Etymonline dates 'money easily acquired' to 1910, though the compound is older. Etymonline records 'gravy train', meaning something lucrative, from 1899 and reports that it was 'said to have been originally railroad slang for a short haul that paid well' - a story the dictionary frames as traditional rather than proven. The earliest citation traced by researcher Michael Quinion and reproduced in Wiktionary is from Pennsylvania's Courier of Connellsville in November 1895, which called a local lockup 'a gravy train'. The expression spread through American slang in the early 20th century and then into general English. The railroad origin should be presented as reported tradition, not documented fact; what is documented is the mid-1890s American attestation.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- board the gravy train
- gravy-train (as modifier)
- riding the gravy train
- the gravy train dries up
Usage Examples
- Consultants had ridden the gravy train for years, billing the city for reports nobody read.
- Once the subsidies ended, the gravy train dried up and three studios closed within a month.
- He accused the regional board of treating the ferry service as a private gravy train.