Definition of "gold-plated" []

• Having a thin layer of gold applied to the surface, often by an electrolytic method. (adjective)
• Incorporating costly or otherwise excessive features or refinements unnecessarily; to be over-engineered (adjective)
• To be embellished to excess, especially so as to be stifling, or rigid and inflexible, (adjective)
• Simple past tense and past participle of gold-plate. (verb)

Wiktionary.org : Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• "Tuxedojunction: If we could agree that the term 'gold-plated' is irrelevant and disingenuous in this debate, we could start to get an understanding of what this is all about."
• "The phrase "gold-plated pension" appears 9,500 times on the Daily Mail website."
• "Trade unions representing a million state employees are drawing up plans for strikes that could bring Britain's schools, universities, courts and Whitehall to a standstill as early as June in protest over government plans to end so-called "gold-plated" public sector pensions, the Guardian has learned."