Wealth

How to spell wealth

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wealth

What does wealth mean?

1. nounAn abundance of money, valuable possessions, or resources.

Wealth in a sentence

• The family built its wealth through decades of careful investment.

• A wealth of experience made her the obvious choice for the role.

Where does wealth come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wealth grew out of the Middle English welthe, which was formed in the 1200s by adding the noun suffix -th to the older word wele, meaning 'well-being' or 'happiness'. That earlier wele descends from the Old English wela, a word for prosperity and welfare that is itself rooted in the same family as 'well', the everyday adverb for being in a good state. So in its oldest sense wealth meant a general condition of doing well rather than simply having money, and only over the centuries did it narrow toward riches and material abundance. The suffix -th, which builds an abstract noun out of an adjective or root, is the same ending you see in 'health', 'truth' and 'warmth', which is a helpful reminder that wealth is spelled with that same -th. The surviving relative 'weal', as in 'the common weal', still carries the original meaning of general welfare.

How the word is built

• weal (well-being, prosperity, from Old English wela)
• -th (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or quality)