Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An abundance of valuable material possessions or resources; riches.
- n. The state of being rich; affluence.
- n. All goods and resources having value in terms of exchange or use.
- n. A great amount; a profusion: a wealth of advice.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Weal; prosperity; well-being; happiness; joy.
- n. Riches; valuable material possessions; that which serves, or the aggregate of those things which serve, a useful or desired purpose, and cannot be acquired without a sacrifice of labor, capital, or time; especially, large possessions; abundance of worldly estate; affluence; opulence.
- n. Affluence; profusion; abundance.
- n. Synonyms Affluence, Riches, etc. Sec opulence.
Wiktionary
- n. obsolete Weal; welfare; prosperity; good; well-being; happiness; joy.
- n. Riches; valuable material possessions.
- n. A great amount; an abundance or plenty.
- n. Power, of the kind associated with a great deal of money.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete Weal; welfare; prosperity; good.
- n. Large possessions; a comparative abundance of things which are objects of human desire; esp., abundance of worldly estate; affluence; opulence; riches.
- n. In the private sense, all pooperty which has a money value.
- n. In the public sense, all objects, esp. material objects, which have economic utility.
- n. Those energies, faculties, and habits directly contributing to make people industrially efficient.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the quality of profuse abundance
- n. property that has economic utility: a monetary value or an exchange value
- n. the state of being rich and affluent; having a plentiful supply of material goods and money
- n. an abundance of material possessions and resources
Etymologies
- From Middle English welth, welthe, weolthe ("happiness, prosperity"), alteration (due to similar words in -th: compare helth ("health"), derth ("dearth")) of wele ("wealth, well-being, weal"), from Old English wela ("wealth, prosperity"), from Proto-Germanic *welô (“well-being, prosperity”), from Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“good, best”), equivalent to weal + -th. Cognate with Dutch weelde ("wealth"), Low German weelde ("wealth"), Old High German welida, welitha ("wealth"). Related also to German Wohl ("welfare, well-being, weal"), Danish vel ("weal, welfare"), Swedish väl ("well-being, weal"). More at weal, well. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English welthe, from wele, from Old English wela; see wel-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“He shows very clearly, according to my notion, that the mere possession of things, or of money, is not wealth, but that _wealth consists in the possession of things useful to us_.”
The Common Sense of Socialism A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg
“As for the comment on wealth, and leaving aside the question of *wealth*, we have so much of it that the choices you mention are not choices at all.”
“Which leads to the wonderful value system wherein wealth is proof of moral value.”
Matthew Yglesias » 400 Families Earned an Average of $345 Million Each in 2007
“The mere use of any of the material products of labour, which we term wealth, can never in itself produce that decay, physical or mental, which precedes the downfall of great civilised nations.”
“They arrived, finally, and this time John understood what the word wealth really meant.”
“I know that sometimes political economists confuse their readers and themselves by a loose use of the term wealth, including in it many things which have nothing at all to do with economics.”
The Common Sense of Socialism A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg
“We have seen that the term wealth, rightly understood, means the fruit of the time-binding work of humanity.”
“So that, in sum, the term wealth is never to be attached to the”
“When I use the term wealth as applied to any bush-settler, it is of course only comparatively; but Jenny was anxious to obtain a place with settlers who enjoyed a small income independent of their forest means.”
“The term wealth inequality refers to the unequal distribution of financial assets among a group of people.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘wealth’.
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Keywords, by Raymond Williams
From a book about life and death.
aesthetic, alienation, art, behaviour, bourgeois, bureaucracy, capitalism, career, charity, city, civilization, class and 99 more...
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RELI - words with Biblical connotations
Words in the Bible evoking biblical stories or with special spiritual meaning. Proper names have been reduced to the minimum.
ark, judgement, holy, saint, baptism, spirit, love, eternal, altar, balsam, covenant, flood and 1115 more...
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Top 500 Shower Curtains
Favorite designs for shower curtains. Inspired by the list Top 500 SAT Words Shower Curtain by jwjarvis.
goldfish, tan stripes, blue stripes, bubbles, map of the world, postcard holder, bacon, mariachis, sushi, palm fronds, periodic table of..., blue circles and 283 more...
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things (good)
things you may rise above with.
goto things (bad)
( randomness, events, situations, nouns )charity, benevolence, status, feral donkeys, instincts, mind, friendship, business, invention, research, discovery, art and 21 more...
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ECON - macroeconomic indicators
aggregate deficit..., GDP at constant p..., GDP at current pr..., perceived inflation, VAT base, VAT rate, resilience of mar..., current income, recession, economic contraction, inflation, deflation and 28 more...
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Economists do it with models
arbitrage, behaviour, capital, dromography, embargo, fiscal, globalisation, hyperinflation, incentive, j-curve, keynesian, labour and 143 more...
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Prosie: Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ad...
(Given Saturday, March 4, 1865, Washington, D.C.)
Fellow-Countrymen:
At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended a...with all nations, among ourselves, a just and lastin..., cherish, achieve, to do all, for his widow and..., to care for him w..., to bind up the na..., let us strive on ..., with firmness in ..., with charity for all and 169 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
contemplate, container, consumer, consultant, consensus, conscious, conscience, connection, confusion, confront, conflict, confident and 4334 more...
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The Last Werewolf
This novel by Glen Duncan, aside from being a ripping yarn and beautifully written, is just littered with words that I had to look up and discover that often his use of the word not only fitted per...
gurns, bok, chimney breast, dichotomy, Platonic form, filthy, Platonic Form, mathematics, BAM, skirls, clarity, blundering and 298 more...
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Prosie: Obama's Inaugural Address
In keeping with my other Prosies (like this one). There were a number of phrases as well as words in this speech that I found particularly compelling.
My fellow citizens: I stand here ...we did not turn b..., when we were tested, what storms may come, icy currents, virtue, hope, alarmed, depth of winter, revolution, snow, enemy, abandoned and 257 more...
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European World Systems
europe, colonization, defense, barter, feudalism, gunpowder, technology, guns, domination, lords, monarchs, transition and 250 more...
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Filthy Stinking Rich
Monetary units and other words that mean money. Other financial words are allowed too, as long as they're principally about money. Get it, principally? I kill me.
money, cash, dough, loot, wad, stack, booty, capital, nest egg, treasure, banknote, net and 168 more...
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Words suggested in response to Funk's...
In response to Wilfred J. Funk's "ten most beautiful words in the English language" list of 1932.
beer, rum, rye, sauterne, sherry, brandy, bourbon, Scotch, champagne, cocktail, lyric, serenity and 137 more...
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Theme Prompts
There's a fiction meme (mostly on Livejournal) where writers use words as a prompt for a short story snippet. I've been collecting the words that show up on these lists as prompts for creative writ...
white, black, gray, red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, violet, queen, king, prince and 407 more...
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Values List
In coaching or psychology work, it is often postulated that people have a personal list of abstract, subjectively defined, emotional concepts that drive them (often called 'values') to answer the b...
honesty, stability, justice, respect, wealth, truth, compassion, creativity, resourcefulness, health, courage, adventure and 66 more...
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secret stash
treasure, motherlode, stash, cache, booty, hidey hole, mattress, x marks the spot, hoard, nest egg, wealth, ali baba and 50 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for wealth.
Louises See glimmering comments. Mar 25, 2012
sakhalinskii "Our true wealth is the good we do in this world. None of us has faith unless we desire for our neighbors what we desire for ourselves." - Muhammad Jul 30, 2008