the.com/paragon
The gold standard everyone cites but nobody actually meets.
means A model of excellence held up as the supreme example of some quality or virtue.
from Traces back through French and Italian to a Greek root meaning a whetstone for testing — literally a stone used to judge the quality of gold or other metals. It later passed through the idea of a touchstone or standard of comparison before settling into English as the word for something (or someone) held up as the perfect measure against which all others are judged.
- origin
- from Greek whetstone for testing gold
- usage
- always singular, never a paragon-ish
- irony
- often invoked right before a scandal