What is the origin of the phrase “Coming Home on the Gravy Train”?
Gravy, as an example of something yummity to put on food, has had figurative uses referring to good things for over a century. From the 1860s to the mid-twentieth century, the word was used in theatrical slang for an easy role, especially in low comedy. Another sense, a rare one, was ‘a person or thing of excellence; that which is the best’, which O. Henry and some other writers used soon after the turn of the century. The main senses refer to money or profit and also arose soon after the turn of the century. The still-current ‘profit or benefit, especially if unexpectedly or easily obtained’ is recorded by 1910. By the 1930s a subsense arose, ‘money that is unearned or obtained illicitly; graft’, also still in use. Gravy train is a metaphorical application of these that means ‘a source or condition of excessive and especially undeserved ease, advantage, or profit; a sinecure’. The phrase ride the gravy train means ‘to exploit a source of easy profit or advantage’. It is used in simila
