rich

Hee wunnt ne riche Mann, dä us vill avjevve kann.
 Vill soll hä jevve, lang soll hä levve!
 Sielig soll hä sterve, der Himmel soll hä erve!

(Can we date this quote?), Traditional (lyrics and music), “Dä hellije Zint Määtes”, a popular song for St. Martin's Day when the children go round singing for sweets:

Here lives a rich man, who can give us a lot.
 A lot he shall give, long he shall live!
 Blessed he shall die, heaven he shall inherit!

head

rich (masculine riche, feminine and plural riche or rich, comparative richer, superlative et richste)

riche (masculine)
riche (feminine plural)
rich (feminine plural)
richer (comparative)
et richste (superlative)
rich (positive)
strong (positive)
riche (masculine positive)
rich (neuter positive)
riche (feminine positive)
riche (positive)
weak (positive)
riche (neuter positive)
partitive (positive)
riches (masculine neuter positive)
initial (positive)
richem (masculine neuter positive)
richer (feminine positive)
riche (plural positive)
non-initial (positive)
richer (comparative)
strong (comparative)
richere (comparative masculine)
richer (comparative feminine neuter)
weak (comparative)
partitive (comparative)
richeres (comparative masculine neuter)
initial (comparative)
richerem (comparative masculine neuter)
richerer (comparative feminine)
richere (comparative plural)
non-initial (comparative)
richere (comparative)
et richste (superlative)
strong (superlative)
richste (superlative)
weak (superlative)
initial (superlative)
richstem (masculine neuter superlative)
richster (feminine superlative)
richste (plural superlative)
non-initial (superlative)
not. (superlative)
riech (alternative)
reich (alternative)

From Middle High German rīche, from Proto-Germanic *rīkijaz.


rich

“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:

Wealthy: having a lot of money and possessions.

a rich dish; rich cream or soup; rich pastry

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:

1709-1710, Thomas Baker, Reflections on Learning
High sauces and rich spices are fetch'd from the Indies.

Having an intense fatty or sugary flavour.

All racists I grew up with have rich jobs.

2019 December, Justin Blackburn, The Bisexual Christian Suburban Failure Enlightening Bipolar Blues, page 79:

a rich treasury; a rich entertainment; a rich crop

rich in fiber; rich in traditions

Tho' my Date of mortal Life be short, it shall be glorious; / Each minute shall be rich in some great action.

The gorgeous East with richest hand / Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.

1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:

For countries with rich culinary traditions that date back to the Aztecs and Incas, Mexico and Peru have developed quite a taste for modern food fashions. Mexicans quaff more fizzy drinks than any other country; Peru has the highest density of fast-food joints in the world.

2013 July 27, “Battle of the bulge”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8846:

Sham Shui Po might be one of Hong Kong’s poorest neighbourhoods but it has a rich immigrant history and a glut of fantastic street-food joints.

2021 August 18, Lee Cobaj, “Best things to do in Hong Kong”, in The Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-10-25:

Plentiful, abounding, abundant, fulfilling.

rich soil or land; a rich mine

Yielding large returns; productive or fertile; fruitful.

a rich endowment; a rich dress; rich silk or fur; rich presents

rich and various gems

1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC:

Composed of valuable or costly materials or ingredients; procured at great outlay; highly valued; precious; sumptuous; costly.

a rich red colour

The scene was a rich one.

a rich incident or character

Now, if money be a marketable commodity like flour, as the Witness states, is it not rather a rich idea that of selling the use of a barrel of flour instead of the barrel of flour itself?

1858, William Brown (of Montreal), The Commercial Crisis: Its Cause and Cure (page 28)

It is a bit rich to oppress, torture, imprison, enslave, deport and proscribe a people for 200 years, and then take credit for the fact that they are democratic at the end of it.

2017 March 8, Shashi Tharoor, “‘But What About the Railways... ?’ The Myth of Britain’s Gifts to India”, in The Guardian, retrieved 2018-04-14:

(informal) Ridiculous, absurd, outrageous, preposterous, especially in a galling, hypocritical, or brazen way.

A skilled multimedia developer will have no problems adding interactive video and audio into existing rich media web pages.

2002, David Austerberry, The Technology of Video and Audio Streaming:

Some rich text email messages contain formatting information that's best viewed with Microsoft Word.

2003, Patricia Cardoza, Patricia DiGiacomo, Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003:

But what did matter was that the new web platform provided a rich experience.

2008, Aaron Newman, Adam Steinberg, Jeremy Thomas, Enterprise 2.0 Implementation:

(computing) Elaborate, having complex formatting, multimedia, or depth of interaction.

mixed up a batch that was quite rich

Of a solute-solvent solution: not weak (not diluted); of strong concentration.

Of a fuel-air mixture: having more fuel (thus less air) than is necessary to burn all of the fuel; less air- or oxygen- rich than necessary for a stoichiometric reaction.

The ETF is trading rich to NAV right now; we can arb this by selling the ETF and buying the underlying constituents.

(finance) Trading at a price level which is high relative to historical trends, a similar asset, or (for derivatives) a theoretical value.

en-adj

rich (comparative richer or more rich, superlative richest or most rich)

richer (comparative)
more rich (comparative)
richest (superlative)
most rich (superlative)

it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God

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.


rich

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.

The rich people of a society or the world collectively, the rich class of a society.


rich

And than he shall be riched ſo,
That it may faile nevermo

c. 1386–1390, John Gower, edited by Reinhold Pauli, Confessio Amantis of John Gower: Edited and Collated with the Best Manuscripts, volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Bell and Daldy […], published 1857, →OCLC:

With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd

c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

(obsolete, intransitive) To become rich.

en-verb

rich (third-person singular simple present riches, present participle riching, simple past and past participle riched)

riches (present singular third-person)
riching (participle present)
riched (participle past)
riched (past)