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  1. nouveau riche love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. One who has recently become rich, especially one who flaunts newly acquired wealth.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. One who has recently acquired wealth; one newly enriched; hence, a wealthy upstart; a parvenu.

Wiktionary

  1. n. pejorative New money; wealthy persons whose fortunes are newly acquired, and who are therefore perceived to lack the refinement of those who were raised wealthy.
  2. adj. Newly rich; like a nouveau riche.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. A person newly rich. Contrasted with old money.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. characteristic of someone who has risen economically or socially but lacks the social skills appropriate for this new position
  2. n. a person who has suddenly risen to a higher economic status but has not gained social acceptance of others in that class

Etymologies

  1. Borrowing from French nouveau riche (literally "new rich"). (Wiktionary)
  2. French : nouveau, new + riche, rich. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “In a city where the nouveau riche trumpeted their success with imported marble and cut-glass chandeliers, the Morris home was a study in decorous restraint.”

    Simon & Schuster: Robert Morris

  • “That kind of romantic interest which Scott evolved from the relations of lord and vassal, of thief and clansman, from the social more than the moral contrast of Roundhead and Cavalier, of far-descended pauper and nouveau riche which Cooper found in the clash of savagery with civilization, and the shaggy virtue bred on the border-land between the two, Indian by habit, white by tradition, Mrs. Stowe seems in her former novels to have sought in a form of society alien to her sympathies, and too remote for exact study, or for the acquirement of that local truth which is the slow result of unconscious observation.”

    The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe

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equivalents (2)

Other words for ‘nouveau riche’

  1. pretentious
  1. nouvelle riche

antonyms (1)

Words with the opposite meaning

  1. old money

same context (22)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. bluish-black
  2. dull-looking
  3. ground-in
  4. ham-fisted
  1. single-rotor
  2. bullet-headed
  3. areal
  4. blustering
  1. dug-up
  2. pseudo-modern
  3. off-beat
  4. nonacademic
  1. unanalyzable
  2. stress-strain
  3. rush-strewn
  4. ever-encroaching
  1. heat-generating
  2. single-burner
  3. five-fingered
  4. nanny-state
  1. interwar
  2. otterish

tags (1)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. tall bearded

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Comments

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  • reesetee Haha!

    *looks around for mom* Oct 19, 2007

  • jennarenn But some people's mothers chose ugly silver!




    Hi mom. Oct 19, 2007

  • sionnach "the kind of people who buy their silver" Oct 18, 2007

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‘nouveau riche’ has been looked up 2675 times, loved by 6 people, added to 19 lists, commented on 3 times, and is not a valid Scrabble word.