How many times have we heard or read the phrase “the almighty
dollar”? We know what it means, the dollar is the object of
universal devotion on the part of Americans. But where did the
phrase come from? It appears that Washington Irving is the
coiner of this particular phrase, although it could be argued
that Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare and himself an
English dramatist, is the coiner because he had used “almighty
gold” in 1616 in his Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland
(“The flattering, mighty, nay, almighty gold”). Washington
Irving coined the phrase in the November 12, 1836, issue of
Knickerbocker magazine, writing in his story “The Creole
Village”: “In a word, the almighty dollar, that great object of
universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine
devotees in these peculiar villages.” Irving, a year later, in
the midst of the financial panic engulfing America, wrote the
dollar is “daily becoming more and more an object of worship.”
The almighty dollar found itself part