# Sodom and Gomorrah

idiom · CEFR B2

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/sodom-and-gomorrah
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

A place or scene of extreme wickedness, vice, and moral ruin.

## Examples

- The preacher called the city a modern Sodom and Gomorrah.
- To their scandalised relatives, the resort town was a Sodom and Gomorrah of cheap liquor and all-night parties.
- The tabloids painted the finance district as a Sodom and Gomorrah of greed and self-indulgence, conveniently forgetting that they had profited from every excess they now condemned.

## Origin

Genesis 18 and 19 tell of two cities on the plain whose wickedness had, in the text's phrasing, become so great that God resolved to destroy them. Abraham bargains for their survival, but not even ten righteous inhabitants can be found, and the cities are consumed by fire and brimstone from the sky. The names became a fixed byword long before English existed, carried through Latin and the church into every European vernacular as shorthand for a society rotten past saving. Today Sodom and Gomorrah names any place given over to conspicuous vice and excess — usually with a note of impending reckoning, since in the original the depravity and the destruction are inseparable.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.