rich

Etymology

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.

adj

1. Wealthy: having a lot of money and possessions.
   In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. The welfare state is dismantled. […] 2013-05-17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 23, page 19
2. Having an intense fatty or sugary flavour.
   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.
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
   Tho' my Date of mortal Life be short, it shall be glorious; / Each minute shall be rich in some great action. 1707, Nicholas Rowe, The Royal Convert
   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. 2013-07-27, “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. August 18, 2021, Lee Cobaj, “Best things to do in Hong Kong”, in The Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-10-25
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
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.
   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. 2017-03-08, Shashi Tharoor, “‘But What About the Railways... ?’ The Myth of Britain’s Gifts to India”, in The Guardian, retrieved 2018-04-14
10. (computing) 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
    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
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.
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.

noun

1. 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 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.

verb

1. (obsolete, transitive) To enrich.
2. (obsolete, intransitive) To become rich.