The boss's pet got a coat of many colors, and the team resented it.
a coat of many colors
idiomA conspicuous mark of favouritism that stirs up envy in others.
Origin
In Genesis 37 the patriarch Jacob loves his son Joseph more than his other children and gives him an ornate robe — rendered by the King James translators as a coat of many colours. The gift is an unmistakable public sign of preference, and Joseph's brothers hate him for it, eventually selling him into slavery.
Whether the Hebrew describes the colours or, as many scholars now think, a long-sleeved or richly worked garment, the point of the story survives either reading: it is the favouritism the coat advertises, not the fabric, that does the damage.
In English a coat of many colours is any showy token of special treatment that marks one person out and breeds resentment in everyone left without one.
Handing the newest hire the corner office was a coat of many colors that turned the whole department against her.
The scholarship, the mentorship, the front-row seat at every meeting — it amounted to a coat of many colors, and the favoured student never understood why her once-friendly classmates had grown so cold.
Genesis after Eden: Noah and the flood, Babel, Sodom, and the patriarchs.
- 01
two by two (idiom)
In pairs, one alongside another.
- 02
Tower of Babel (idiom)
A grand, over-ambitious project that collapses into confusion and a breakdown in communication.
- 03
Sodom and Gomorrah (idiom)
A place or scene of extreme wickedness, vice, and moral ruin.
- 04
a pillar of salt (idiom)
The fate of someone who cannot stop looking back at the past instead of moving forward.
- 05
Jacob's ladder (idiom)
A link between the earthly and the heavenly, or by extension a long, steep climb.
- 06
old as Methuselah (idiom)
Extremely old; ancient.