Riding the Gravy Train

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Meaning:

Riding the Gravy Train means that you are getting Easy money; money obtained with little effort.

Origin:

Ok, are you thinking this is a train that transports gravy? You know, that delicious sauce that you put over your dinner? Not quite; the word gravy in this phrase was slang for extra money or easy money in the late 1800s.

A similar phrase was written by W.C. Handy, which he used in one of his blues songs in 1914, in which he grumbles about “falling off the gravy train” You know, losing that easy cash flow.

This phrase started out in the United States, the slang term became modern during the financial boom of the early 1900s. It was first recorded in The Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson which stated that in the 1920s, railroad men used the expression “ride the gravy train” to mean a run or job with which there was good pay and little work.

Example:

Today we still use riding the gravy train to express money that comes in with little to no effort; we have also shortened the phrase down to just gravy train; an example sentence is:

“Their gravy train ended when the government stopped funding the research project.”

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