Why “mammonite” is a great word
A person whose devotion to wealth is absolute, a zealous adherent for whom its pursuit becomes idolatry. The term, from Mammon (a personification of wealth and greed, from Late Latin mammona, from Greek mamōnas, from Aramaic māmōn) and the suffix -ite (denoting an adherent), was first attested in 1712 by the satirist Edward Ward. Unlike a capitalist, a neutral economic descriptor, or a miser, a shriveled hoarder, the mammonite worships acquisition itself, finding in wealth a graven image of power. He is the cold gleam in the eye of the speculator, the unspoken creed of the gilded boardroom, the hollow echo in a cathedral converted to a bank vault—a disciple of a gospel where enough is a theological impossibility.