nouveau riche
UK/ˌnuː.vəʊ ˈɹiːʃ//ˌnu.voʊ ˈɹiʃ/
nouveau riche noun: new money; wealthy persons whose fortunes are newly acquired, and who are therefore perceived to lack the refinement of those who were raised wealthy.
Noun
nouveau riche (countable and uncountable, plural nouveaux riches)
- New money; wealthy persons whose fortunes are newly acquired, and who are therefore perceived to lack the refinement of those who were raised wealthy.
- You must find your opening at Paris. I wish you to spend a year in the capital, and live, not extravagantly, like a nouveau riche, but in a way not unsuited to your rank, and permitting you all the social advantages that belong to it.1873, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, chapter VII, in The Parisians, book III
- Twenty-four hours later we were both in the vast halls of the Winter Palace in full uniform, as bedizened with gold as a nouveau riche’s drawing-room.1921, Lord Frederic Hamilton, Here, There And Everywhere
- Antonyms:
- vieux riche, nouveau pauvre
Adjective
nouveau riche (not comparable)
- Newly rich; like a nouveau riche.
- Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes of taking it for granted that people are born with carriages and country-places: it never occurred to her that such congenital attributes could be matter for self-consciousness, and she had none of the nouveau riche prudery which classes poverty with...1899, Edith Wharton, “A Cup of Cold Water”, in The Greater Inclination
nouveau riche meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam and Tagalog
nouveau riche in Hindi
- new money: wealthy persons whose fortunes are newly acquired, and who are therefore perceived to lack the refinement of those who were raised wealthy
- नए अमीर nae amīr, कल का नवाब kal kā navāb
nouveau riche in Urdu
- نودولتیا
nouveau riche in Malayalam
- the new rich, parvenus, arrivistes
- പുതുപണക്കാർ, പുതുമടിശ്ശീലക്കാർ, പുത്തൻ പ്രമാണികൾ, പെട്ടെന്നു പണക്കരായവർ, പെട്ടെന്നു കേമനായവർ, ഔപാദികൻ
nouveau riche in Tagalog
- new money: wealthy persons whose fortunes are newly acquired, and who are therefore perceived to lack the refinement of those who were raised wealthy
- bagong-yaman, biglang-yaman
More languagesFewer languages
- nouveau riche in Arabic
- مُحْدَث اَلنَّعْمَة muḥdaṯ an-naʕma
- nouveau riche in Indonesian
- orang kaya baru
- nouveau riche in Persian
- نودولتان noddoltân
- nouveau riche in Vietnamese
- nhà giàu mới nổi
- nouveau riche in Myanmar
- လူချမ်းသာအသစ် luhkyam:saa.sac
Synonyms of nouveau riche
Antonyms
Forms of nouveau riche
| plural | nouveaux riches |
|---|
Origin of nouveau riche
An unadapted borrowing from French nouveau riche (literally “new rich”).
Words formed from nouveau riche
Words that rhyme with nouveau riche
25 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about nouveau riche
- What does nouveau riche mean?
- Nouveau riche means new money; wealthy persons whose fortunes are newly acquired, and who are therefore perceived to lack the refinement of those who were raised wealthy.
- What is nouveau riche in Hindi?
- Nouveau riche in Hindi is नए अमीर (nae amīr), कल का नवाब (kal kā navāb). See Nouveau riche meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is nouveau riche?
- Nouveau riche can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce nouveau riche?
- Nouveau riche is pronounced /ˌnuː.vəʊ ˈɹiːʃ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of nouveau riche?
- The plural of nouveau riche is nouveaux riches.
Words near nouveau riche in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nouveau riche (page history and authors); nouveau riche (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nouveau riche (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-nouveau riche.wav.
Cite this entry: “nouveau riche.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nouveau_riche. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.