# Faustian bargain

idiom

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/faustian-bargain
Updated: 2026-08-10

## Meaning

An agreement in which a person abandons his or her spiritual values or moral principles in order to obtain knowledge, wealth or other benefits.

## Examples

- Selling your integrity for a promotion is a Faustian bargain.
- The politician made a Faustian bargain, trading his long-held principles for the promise of absolute power.
- By accepting the corrupt funding to save his failing company, the CEO entered into a Faustian bargain that would eventually destroy his reputation.

## Origin

Derived from the mediaeval legend of Faust, who entered into a contract with the Devil to exchange his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The narrative first appeared in print in an anonymous 1587 chapbook titled Historia von D. Johann Fausten. This text purported to record the life of Johann Georg Faust, a German alchemist and magician born circa 1466 or 1480, who died circa 1541. The story achieved broader recognition through the theatre, notably in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragicall History of D. Faustus, first published in 1604. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe further established the theme in his Faust, published in two parts in 1808 and 1832. The idiom preserves the name of the alchemist while the particulars of his arrangement—trading eternal standing for temporary advantage—remain the defining feature of the term.

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