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rich

/ˈɹɪt͡ʃ/adjective, noun

rich is an adjective meaning “Wealthy: having a lot of money and possessions” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-I-C-H and has one syllable (rich), and it appears 81 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Rich, the name).

What does rich mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    Wealthy: having a lot of money and possessions.

  2. 2

    Having an intense fatty or sugary flavour.

    a rich dish; rich cream or soup; rich pastry; a very rich chocolate cake

  3. 3

    Remunerative.

  4. 4

    Plentiful, abounding, abundant, fulfilling.

    a rich treasury; a rich entertainment; a rich crop

  5. 5

    Yielding large returns; productive or fertile; fruitful.

    rich soil or land; a rich mine

  6. 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. 7

    Not faint or delicate; vivid.

    a rich red colour

  8. 8

    informalVery amusing.

    The scene was a rich one.

noun

  1. 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

  2. 2

    the second placer in Tycoon

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo enrich.

  2. 2

    obsoleteTo become rich.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce rich?

  • /ˈɹɪt͡ʃ/
  • [ˈɹʷɪt͡ʃ]

Rich has one syllable, split rich in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-rich.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of rich

  • richer comparative
  • more rich comparative
  • richest superlative
  • most rich superlative
  • riches present, singular, he/she/it
  • riching participle, present
  • riched participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is rich?

Rich appears 81 times per million words in written English, the 1,302nd most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Rich, the name.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Rich in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchriche (having wealth)
Germanreich (having wealth)
Portugueserico, rica (having wealth)
Spanishrico, pesudo (having wealth), cargado (having an intense fatty or sugary flavor)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does rich come from?

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.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).