nouveau riche

[ noo-voh reesh; French noo-voh reesh ]

noun

, plural nou·veaux riches [noo, -voh , reesh, noo-voh , reesh].

1. a person who is newly rich:

   the ostentation of the nouveaux riches of the 1920s.

nouveau riche

/ ˌnuːvəʊ ˈriːʃ; nuvo riʃ /

noun

1. often plural a person who has acquired wealth recently and is regarded as vulgarly ostentatious or lacking in social graces

adjective

1. of or characteristic of the nouveaux riches

nouveau riche

1. A pejorative term for one who has recently become rich and who spends money conspicuously. From French, meaning “new rich.”

Word History and Origins

Origin of nouveau riche¹

1805–15; < French: new rich (person)

Word History and Origins

Origin of nouveau riche¹

French, literally: new rich

Example Sentences

In February 2022, Ms. Peterson, an author and art collector, was surrounded by a new clientele: the crypto nouveau riche, who made a temporary home of the art market.

From New York Times

On the HBO costume drama “The Gilded Age,” Kelli O’Hara plays a New York grande dame forced to choose sides in an opera war: remain at the old guard’s Academy of Music, or defect to the Metropolitan Opera being built by the nouveau riche they had excluded.

From New York Times

Filled with high-stake dramatic shoot-outs and neon nouveau riche glamour, the six-part Netflix series Griselda presents the notorious criminal as a hard done by yet savvy and ambitious woman.

From BBC

His sentences are full of nervy energy and irreverent wit: highly medicated patients at an elder care facility produce “mutant” excrement; a badminton coach past his prime looks like “Bruce Willis in yellow-brownface”; a nouveau riche character’s designer handbags are “so giant I swore they had gained consciousness and could swallow me whole, were I to transgress their master.”

From Los Angeles Times

A TV adaptation of “The Custom of the Country” had been in the works at Sony in 2014, with Scarlett Johansson being eyed to play the nouveau riche Undine.

From Los Angeles Times