The Golden Goose
Profitable magical bird
The Golden Goose is a fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in which a simpleton's kindness earns him a goose with golden feathers.
People who touch it become stuck to it and each other, creating a comic procession.
The phrase golden goose now refers to any reliable source of wealth or success—often in warnings not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs by destroying something valuable through greed or short-sightedness.
- eggsReproductive cells in shells
- fairy taleMagical children's narrative
- fairy tale endingIdealized perfect resolution
- happily ever afterTraditional story's final promise
- folk taleTraditional oral narrative
Brothers Grimm · Grimm · greed · feathers · foolish · treasure · wealth · magic · peasant · inn · stuck · glue · sticky situation · princess · laughter · procession · simpleton · village idiot
- Transformation TalesBeauty and the Beast, The Frog Prince, Swan Lake, Pinocchio, werewolf story
The Golden Goosemoney pit
Endlessly expensive undertaking
white elephant · albatross · liability · burden · dead weight
The Golden Gooseflash in the pan
Short-lived success
one-hit wonder · windfall · boom and bust · lucky break · spent force
golden, goose, gold, gilded, gilds, gilding, geese, gosling, goslings