golden goose

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a source of continual or reliable profit or benefit that should be protected and not destroyed through greed or impatience; the phrase derives from Aesop's fable of the goose that laid golden eggs, whose owner killed the bird hoping to extract all the eggs at once, only to discover that there were none inside and that the source of the treasure had been irrevocably destroyed; it is used to warn against short-term exploitation of valuable assets or relationships at the cost of their long-term continued productivity