nouveau riche
\nu.vo ʁiʃ\
The verdict
“nouveau riche” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Personne dont la fortune est récente et qui a tendance à l'afficher au-delà de certaines convenances sociales.
Corpus desk
Index FR-nouveau-riche · nouveau riche · French
nouveau riche · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "N" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | nouveau riche |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \nu.vo ʁiʃ\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « nouveau riche » en français
Rare enough to double-check
nouveau riche is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \nu.vo ʁiʃ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Personne dont la fortune est récente et qui a tendance à l'afficher au-delà de certaines convenances sociales.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for nouveau riche, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is nouveau riche, spelled N-O-U-V-E-A-U- -R-I-C-H-E.
Definition
- 1Personne dont la fortune est récente et qui a tendance à l'afficher au-delà de certaines convenances sociales.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how nouveau riche appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Jacqueline dit : « Oh ! maman si tu voyais Rictus, ce qu'il est chic ! On dirait un nouveau riche ! »
Surtout, cette irruption de l’argent facile, avec la spéculation, et l’apparition de nouveaux riches, avait contribué à bousculer l’ordonnancement social : ainsi, était-ce la fille d'un commissaire aux vivres, une bourgeoise, une financière enrichie, la « Poisson », qui devint la favorite de Louis XV […].
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.