Adorer le veau d'or

Literally: To worship the golden calf

Example: “Dans ce quartier d'affaires, tout le monde adore le veau d'or.” — In this business district, everyone worships the golden calf.

English equivalent: To worship the golden calf

Origin: French had the veel d'or by 1170 and the veau d'or by the end of the 15th century. In Exodus, Moses is up Mount Sinai waiting for the Tablets of the Law — forty days of it — while the Hebrews he has led to the foot of the mountain grow bored and conclude he is not coming back. They ask Aaron for a god; he has the women and children hand over their jewelry, melts it down, and casts a young bull in the manner of the Egyptian deities Hathor and Apis. Moses returns, finds his people worshipping it, and obtains God's pardon only by having three thousand of them killed. The calf's first figurative career in French was as a symbol of idleness, and at the end of the 17th century Littré still records it as a man whose only merit is being rich — a sense now gone. The modern phrase appeared at that same moment and kept only the gold.