rentier
/ˈɹɒntɪeɪ/noun
rentier is a noun meaning “An individual who receives an income, usually interest, rent, dividends, capital gains, or profits from his or her assets and investments” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-E-N-T-I-E-R and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 12 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of rentier is rentiers.
What does rentier mean?
noun
- 1
An individual who receives an income, usually interest, rent, dividends, capital gains, or profits from his or her assets and investments.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce rentier?
- /ˈɹɒntɪeɪ/
- /ɹɑ̃ˈtjeɪ/
- /ɹɛnˈtɪɚ/
Rentier has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-VGPaleontologist-rentier.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of rentier
- rentiers plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is rentier?
Rentier appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 102,771st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Rentier in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense individual who receives capital income:
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 rentier come from?
Borrowed from French rentier.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).