What Is Origin of the Word Gravy and Gravy Train?

The name of a dog food and the subject of at least one blues song by W.C. Handy, gravy train is a slang term which refers to easy money that just keeps on rolling in, with little effort required. Say, for instance, you receive a large inheritance from a mysterious relative, which comes in monthly installments: You are riding the gravy train. Where did we get this curious idiom?

Origin of the Word Gravy

Although gravy, in America, refers to a sauce made from meat drippings, the word is thought to have come from the Old French word grané, which was turned into the Middle English gravé. This may have been the result of someone simply misreading the word grané.

The modern v was written as u in Medieval manuscripts and could be difficult to distinguish from n. The origin of the word grané, however, is not entirely clear. The usual suggestion is that it derived from the Latin word granum, meaning grain, which became the Old French and the English word grain, with grain, in Old French, meaning spice.

We can only speculate how “spice” came to be translated as a sauce, but perhaps “spiced sauce” makes sense.

In medieval cookbooks, gravé referred to a spicy sauce made with broth, spices, wine, or ale. By the 16th century, the term somehow came to be known as a sauce made from meat drippings.

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Origin of ‘Gravy Train’

Regardless of whether you think of gravy as a rich meat-based tomato sauce, or, as do most Americans, as a thick brown sauce made from pan drippings, especially good with biscuits, there is no disputing that we all love our gravy.

In the early twentieth century, the word gravy came to mean “easy money.” This sometimes meant easy profits resulting from just plain old good luck, but it also could refer to easy, but ill-gotten gains, especially through conning your way into it.

Gravy could also refer to any unexpected benefit or poker winnings, and conversely, to a prison sentence, especially a harsh one, as in the phrase “dish out the gravy” to mean deliver a harsh sentence.

When you combine gravy with train, then, you get the idea of easy money that keeps coming in with little effort on your part. It doesn’t stop, just like a train. We could leave it at that and feel pretty certain that we understand the origins of gravy train, but it turns out that the term actually originated with railroad workers of the 1920s, who used it to mean an easy but high-paying run.

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Riding the Gravy Train

Pink Floyd used the phrase “riding the gravy train” in their song Have a Cigar, in regards to, ostensibly, record executives or other music industry hanger-ons urging the band to capitalize on the success of a previous hit for “easy money” and, perhaps, to the record company itself “getting a free ride.”

In the 1970s, truck drivers had a similar expression. A gravy hauler was a truck driver who would only drive high-paying runs.