rich – English noun declension

English noun forms of rich

Noun: rich
Singularrich

Sample Sentences

  • Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are... [1926 Jan., F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Rich Boy", The Red Book Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 3, p. 28]
  • […] if he lived he would never write about her, he knew that now. Nor about any of them. The rich were dull and they drank too much, or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, "The rich are different from you and me." And how some one had said to Scott, Yes, they have more money. But that was not humorous to Scott. He thought they were a special glamourous race and when he found they weren't it wrecked him just as much as any other thing that wrecked him. [1936 Aug., Ernest Hemingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", Esquire]
  • Hem is headed for Wyoming,—& wasn't that reference to Scott, in his splendid story otherwise, contemptable, & more so because he said "I am getting to know the rich" & Molly Colum said—we were at lunch together—"the only difference between the rich & other people is that the rich have more money." [1936 Aug. 15, Maxwell Perkins, letter to Elizabeth Lemmon]
  • This is the same Randian bullshit that we've been hearing from people like Brooks for ages and its entire premise is really revolting and insulting—this idea that the way society works is that the productive "rich" feed the needy "poor," and that any attempt by the latter to punish the former for "excesses" might inspire Atlas to Shrug his way out of town and leave the helpless poor on their own to starve. That's basically Brooks's entire argument here. Yes, the rich and powerful do rig the game in their own favor, and yes, they are guilty of "excesses"—but fucking deal with it, if you want to eat. [2010 Jan. 27, Matt Taibbi, "Populism: Just Like Racism!", True/Slant]
  • When the poor have no more to eat, they will eat the rich.

Etymology

1. 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.
2. 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. See: Middle English Nouns 'riche', Old English Nouns 'rīċe', Dutch Nouns 'rijk', German Nouns 'reich', Danish Nouns 'rig', French Nouns 'riche', Italian Nouns 'ricco'.

Verbs referencing "rich"

French Nouns riche.