Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An abundance of valuable material possessions or resources; riches.
  • noun The state of being rich; affluence.
  • noun Goods and resources having value in terms of exchange or use.
  • noun A great amount; a profusion.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Weal; prosperity; well-being; happiness; joy.
  • noun Riches; valuable material possessions; that which serves, or the aggregate of those things which serve, a useful or desired purpose, and cannot be acquired without a sacrifice of labor, capital, or time; especially, large possessions; abundance of worldly estate; affluence; opulence.
  • noun Affluence; profusion; abundance.
  • noun Synonyms Affluence, Riches, etc. Sec opulence.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete Weal; welfare; prosperity; good.
  • noun Large possessions; a comparative abundance of things which are objects of human desire; esp., abundance of worldly estate; affluence; opulence; riches.
  • noun In the private sense, all pooperty which has a money value.
  • noun In the public sense, all objects, esp. material objects, which have economic utility.
  • noun Those energies, faculties, and habits directly contributing to make people industrially efficient.
  • noun See under Active.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete Weal; welfare; prosperity; good; well-being; happiness; joy.
  • noun Riches; valuable material possessions.
  • noun A great amount; an abundance or plenty.
  • noun Power, of the kind associated with a great deal of money.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quality of profuse abundance
  • noun property that has economic utility: a monetary value or an exchange value
  • noun the state of being rich and affluent; having a plentiful supply of material goods and money
  • noun an abundance of material possessions and resources

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English welthe, from wele, from Old English wela; see wel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English welth, welthe, weolthe ("happiness, prosperity"), alteration (due to similar words in -th: compare helth ("health"), derth ("dearth")) of wele ("wealth, well-being, weal"), from Old English wela ("wealth, prosperity"), from Proto-Germanic *welô (“well-being, prosperity”), from Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“good, best”), equivalent to weal +‎ -th. Cognate with Dutch weelde ("wealth"), Low German weelde ("wealth"), Old High German welida, welitha ("wealth"). Related also to German Wohl ("welfare, well-being, weal"), Danish vel ("weal, welfare"), Swedish väl ("well-being, weal"). More at weal, well.

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Examples

Comments

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  • "Our true wealth is the good we do in this world. None of us has faith unless we desire for our neighbors what we desire for ourselves." - Muhammad

    July 30, 2008

  • See glimmering comments.

    March 25, 2012