mammon

name

1. The desire for wealth personified as an evil spirit or a malign influence.

   “No man can ſerue two maſters: for either he will hate the one and loue the other, or elſe hee will holde to the one, and deſpiſe the other. Ye cannot ſerue God and Mammon.”

   “Lives sacrificed upon the altar of Mammon, only units in the thousands who have fallen in the wilds of Australia, victims to the fever and unrest caused by the search for gold.”

2. Often mammon: wealth, material avarice, profit.

   “The proper sphere of the church, after all, was the kingdom of God, not greedy earthbound kingdoms of mammon, which should be left to temporal authorities to rule and squabble over.”

   “But he [Andrew Wyeth] did not want to become an all-American illustrator like the Post's illustrious Norman Rockwell – and he had heard his own father, an illustrator, bemoan choosing the path of mammon rather than the path of virtue, and declined.”

3. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of Mammon (“wealth, material avarice”).