Meaning of golden touch | Babel Free

Definitions

Synonym of Midas touch (“the ability to achieve financial reward (or, more generally, success) easily and consistently”).

idiomatic

Examples

“In fine, his [Nathaniel Hawthorne's] golden touch is as unfailing as was that of Midas, and transmutes whatever he lays hand upon. [...] [H]e so transforms incidents and transactions of the most trivial character, as to render them grand, pathetic, or grotesque. [...] His golden touch, we would then say, imposes no superficial glitter, but brings out upon the surface, and concentrates into luminous points, the interior gilding, which is attached to the meanest objects and the lowliest scenes by their contact with the realm of sentiment, emotion, and spiritual life.”

“On May 8, 1945—V.E. Day—John Hersey won the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, A Bell for Adano. Twenty years later, with the appearance of his eleventh book, White Lotus, he has been told that while he once aspired to have a silver tongue, he has been given instead a golden touch; that instead of writing literature for all time, he has written books that make the Book-of-the-Month Club. Hersey should not have been discouraged by such remarks.”

“"He's something of a whiz-kid in City matters, you know. The golden touch, in a modest kind of way." He looked around his sitting-room, as if to say there were golden touches and golden touches. "As a matter of fact that happens to be my form of bingo too. So we've been … thrown together, on occasion."”

“The extension [of the Toronto Street Railway's Avenue Road streetcar line] was not only convenient, it also added considerably to the value of Benvenuto and the property around it. When it came to railways, [William] Mackenzie had all of the Scotsman's golden touch.”

“What if the precogs have somehow lost their golden touch and their predictions are no longer impeccable? What if some errors of commission, or some errors of omission, have slipped in? How can we know that they haven't?”

“[John] Hammond had high expectations for [Bob] Dylan. After all, he had a reputation to maintain. He had a lot riding on Dylan—not the least that he wanted to prove to the executives at Columbia that he still had the golden touch.”

“He was respected, climbing up the corporate ladder, and receiving accolades from his colleagues for all his good work. On the outside, he was the guy everyone wanted to be; people said he had the golden touch. However, [...] he believed his success was like a house of cards that could come crashing down at any moment because, in his mind, he was a fake, and somehow he had been fooling people for a long time.”

“Luckily for England, they have a world-class striker with a golden touch in [Harry] Kane, who was coolness personified to carefully direct in the winner.”

CEFR level