From Middle English riche, from Old English rīċe, from Proto-West Germanic *rīkī, from Proto-Germanic *rīkijaz, from Proto-Germanic *rīks, an early borrowing from Proto-Celtic *rīxs, from Proto-Indo-European *h₃rḗǵs.

• IPA: /ɹɪt͡ʃ/

rich (comparative richer, superlative richest)

1. Wealthy: having a lot of money and possessions.
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC ↗:

     “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. […]”

2. Having an intense fatty or sugary flavour.

   a rich dish; rich cream or soup; rich pastry

   • 1709-1710, Thomas Baker (antiquarian), Reflections on Learning

     High sauces and rich spices are fetch'd from the Indies.

3. Remunerative.
4. Plentiful, abounding, abundant, fulfilling.

   a rich treasury; a rich entertainment; a rich crop

   • 1707, Nicholas Rowe, The Royal Convert:

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

   • 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 ↗:

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

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

   • 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 ↗:

     rich and various gems

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

     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?

10. (computing) Elaborate, having complex formatting, multimedia, or depth of interaction.
    • 2003, Patricia Cardoza, Patricia DiGiacomo, Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003:

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

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

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

11. 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.

       Antonyms: lean#Adjective

12. (finance) 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.

• (having wealth) See Thesaurus:wealthy

• (antonym(s) of “wealthy”): See Thesaurus:impoverished
• (antonym(s) of “plentiful”): needy
• (antonym(s) of “computing”): plain, unformatted, vanilla
• (antonym(s) of “fuel-air mixture”): lean
• (antonym(s) of “financial markets”): cheap

• nouveau riche

• French: riche
• German: reich
• Italian: ricco
• Portuguese: rico, rica
• Russian: бога́тый
• Spanish: rico, pesudo

rich (plural p)

1. The rich people of a society or the world collectively, the rich class of a society.
   • 1926 Jan., F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Rich Boy", Redbook, Vol. 46, No. 3, p. 28 ↗:

     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...

   • 1936 Aug., Ernest Hemingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro (short story)", Esquire (magazine):

     ...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 F. 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. 15, Maxwell Perkins, letter ↗ to Elizabeth Lemmon:

     ...Ernest Hemingway is headed for Wyoming,—& wasn't that reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (short story) otherwise, contemptable, & more so because he said "I am getting to know the rich" & Mary Colum said—we were at lunch together—"the only difference between the rich & other people is that the rich have more money."

   • 2010 Jan. 27, Matt Taibbi, "[https://web.archive.org/web/20130119170145/http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/01/27/populism-just-like-racism/ Populism: Just Like Racism!]", True/Slant:

     This is the same Randian bullshit that we've been hearing from people like David Brooks (commentator) 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 Shrugged his way out of town and leave the helpless poor on their own to starve. That's basically David Brooks (commentator)'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.

   When the poor have no more to eat, they will eat the rich.

rich (riches, present participle riching; simple past and past participle riched)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To enrich.
   • 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 ↗:

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

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 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):

     With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd

2. (obsolete, intransitive) To become rich.

From Richard.

1. A male given name.
2. Surname.
3. A place in USA:
   1. A twp in Cook County, Illinois.
   2. A twp in Anderson County, Kansas.
   3. A twp in Lapeer County, Michigan.
   4. An ucomm in Coahoma County, Mississippi.