nouveau riche

Borrowed from French nouveau riche (literally “new rich”).

• (UK, Anglicised) IPA^(key): /ˌnuː.vəʊ ˈɹiːʃ/
• (US, Anglicised) IPA^(key): /ˌnu.voʊ ˈɹiʃ/, /ˌnu.voʊ ˈɹɪtʃ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪtʃ

nouveau riche (countable and uncountable, plural nouveaux riches)

1. (derogatory) New money; wealthy persons whose fortunes are newly acquired, and who are therefore perceived to lack the refinement of those who were raised wealthy.

   Synonyms: parvenu, arriviste, neo-rich

   Antonyms: vieux riche, nouveau pauvre

   • 1873, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, chapter VII, in The Parisians‎, book III:

     You must find your opening at Paris. I wish you to spend a year in the capital, and live, not extravagantly, like a nouveau riche, but in a way not unsuited to your rank, and permitting you all the social advantages that belong to it.

   • 1921, Lord Frederic Hamilton, Here, There And Everywhere‎:

     Twenty-four hours later we were both in the vast halls of the Winter Palace in full uniform, as bedizened with gold as a nouveau riche’s drawing-room.

nouveau riche is sometimes treated as a singular noun with the plural nouveaux riches and sometimes as a plural noun with no separate singular form.

• new nouveau riche

nouveau riche (not comparable)

1. Newly rich; like a nouveau riche.
   • 1899, Edith Wharton, “A Cup of Cold Water”, in The Greater Inclination‎:

     Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes of taking it for granted that people are born with carriages and country-places: it never occurred to her that such congenital attributes could be matter for self-consciousness, and she had none of the nouveau riche prudery which classes poverty with the nude in art and is not sure how to behave in the presence of either.

• nouveau riche on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• IPA^(key): /nu.vo ʁiʃ/

• Audio

  (file)

nouveau riche m (plural nouveaux riches)

1. nouveau riche

   Synonyms: arriviste, parvenu