golden goose: a person, product, or asset that consistently generates wealth. The phrase traces back to Aesop’s fable “The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs”, written around 600 BCE. In the story, a farmer owns a magical goose that lays one golden egg each day. Driven by greed, he kills the goose hoping to retrieve all the gold at once, only to find it empty inside. The moral: greed can destroy a reliable source of prosperity.