more money than brains

English

Alternative forms

• more dollars than sense

Phrase

more money than brains

1. Wealthy, but lacking the wisdom to spend that wealth wisely.
   • 1693 (date written), D. F. [pseudonym; Daniel Defoe], “Of Projectors”, in An Essay upon Projects, London: […] R. R. for Tho[mas] Cockerill, […], published 1697, →OCLC, pages 34–35:

     The Diver ſhall walk at the bottom of the Thames; the Saltpeter-Maker ſhall Build Tom T---ds Pond into Houſes; the Engineers Build Models and Windmills to draw Water, till Funds are rais’d to carry it on, by Men who have more Money than Brains, and then good night Patent and Invention; the Projector has done his buſineſs, and is gone.

   • 1873–1884 (date written), Samuel Butler, chapter IV, in R[ichard] A[lexander] Streatfeild, editor, The Way of All Flesh, London: Grant Richards, published 1903, →OCLC, page 16:

     But I suppose that a prig with more money than brains was much the same sixty or seventy years ago as he is now.