The Gilded Age is defined as the time between the Civil War and World War I during which the U.S. population and economy grew quickly, there was a lot of political corruption and corporate financial misdealings and many wealthy people lived very fancy lives.
(noun)An example of the Gilded Age is when corporations becoming the most common form of business and labor unions started to grow strong.
See Gilded Age in Webster's New World College Dictionary
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Origin: from the novel The Gilded Age (1873) by Mark Twain & C. D. Warner
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