rich

Adjective

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

1. Wealthy: having a lot of money and possessions.
   • “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

   Synonyms:

   bow-legged wi' brass, comfortably off, filthy rich, loaded, fat, minted, moneyed, moneybags, of means, oofy

   Antonyms:

   poor, almsless, arm, badly off, bankrupt, beggared, beggarly, boracic, broke, broken

2. Having an intense fatty or sugary flavour.
   • a rich dish; rich cream or soup; rich pastry; a very rich chocolate cake
   • 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
3. Remunerative.
   • All racists I grew up with have rich jobs.2019 December, Justin Blackburn, The Bisexual Christian Suburban Failure Enlightening Bipolar Blues, page 79
4. Plentiful, abounding, abundant, fulfilling.
   • a rich treasury; a rich entertainment; a rich crop
   • rich in fiber; rich in traditions

   Antonyms:

   low, scarce

5. Yielding large returns; productive or fertile; fruitful.
   • rich soil or land; a rich mine
6. Composed of valuable or costly materials or ingredients; procured at great outlay; highly valued; precious; sumptuous; costly.
   • a rich endowment; a rich dress; rich silk or fur; rich presents
   • rich and various gems1634 October 9 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey...
7. Not faint or delicate; vivid.
   • a rich red colour
8. (informal) Very amusing.
   • The scene was a rich one.
   • a rich incident or character
9. (informal) Ridiculous, absurd, outrageous, preposterous, especially in a galling, hypocritical, or brazen way.
   • That's rich, coming from you.
   • 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)
10. (slang, uncommon) Pornographic; titillating.
11. Elaborate, having complex formatting, multimedia, or depth of interaction.
    • 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

    Antonyms:

    plain, unformatted, vanilla

12. Of a solute-solvent solution: not weak (not diluted); of strong concentration.
    • mixed up a batch that was quite rich
    1. 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.
13. Trading at a price level which is high relative to historical trends, a similar asset, or (for derivatives) a theoretical value.
    • The ETF is trading rich to NAV right now; we can arb this by selling the ETF and buying the underlying constituents.

    Antonyms:

    cheap

Noun

rich pl (plural only)

1. (plural, plural-only) The rich people of a society or the world collectively, the rich class of a society.
   • 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...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...1936 Aug., Ernest Hemingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", Esquire
2. (plural, plural-only) the second placer in Tycoon

   Antonyms:

   poor

Verb

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

1. (obsolete, transitive) To enrich.
   • And than he shall be riched ſo,
     That it may faile nevermoc. 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...
   • With shadowy forests and with champains rich'dc. 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...
2. (intransitive, obsolete) To become rich.

Proper noun capitalized: Rich

IPA/ɹɪt͡ʃ/

Rich

1. A diminutive of the male given name Richard.
2. A surname transferred from the given name.
3. A township in Cook County, Illinois.
4. A township in Anderson County, Kansas.
5. A township in Lapeer County, Michigan.
6. An unincorporated community in Coahoma County, Mississippi.