Definition
adjWealthy: having a lot of money and possessions.
adjHaving an intense fatty or sugary flavour.
Sentence Examples
He's rich. He doesn't need money!
Ah! If I were rich, I'd buy myself a house in Spain.
Dreams can be a rich source of inspiration for an artist.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English riche (“strong, powerful, rich”), from Old English rīċe (“powerful, mighty, great, high-ranking, rich, wealthy, strong, potent”), from Proto-West Germanic *rīkī (“powerful, rich”), from Proto-Germanic *rīkijaz (“kingly, powerful, rich”), from Proto-Germanic *rīks (“king, ruler”), an early borrowing from Proto-Celtic *rīxs, from Proto-Indo-European *h₃rḗǵs. Reinforced by Old French riche, from the same West Germanic source.
Cognate with Dutch rijk, German reich, Danish rig, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish rik, Faroese and Icelandic ríkur, Portuguese and Spanish rico, French riche, Italian ricco.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"“A very welcome, kind, useful present, that means to the parish. By the way, Hopkins, let this go no further. We don't want the tale running round that a rich person has arrived. Churchill, my dear fellow, we have such greedy sharks, and wolves in lamb's clothing.[…]”"
— 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
"In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. The welfare state is dismantled. […]"
— 2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 23, page 19:
"The richest person in the world got even richer Friday, with Musk’s net worth hitting a record $347.8 billion, Bloomberg reported."
— 2024 November 22, Ramishah Maruf, “Elon Musk has never been richer. He’s now worth nearly $350 billion”, in CNN:
"It is the richest food I have ever eaten, and for this reason I soon learned to partake of it sparingly."
— 1929, Robert Dean Frisbee, The Book of Puka-Puka, Eland, published 2019, page 116:
"All racists I grew up with have rich jobs."
— 2019 December, Justin Blackburn, The Bisexual Christian Suburban Failure Enlightening Bipolar Blues, page 79: