affluence

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

affluence

mid-15c., "a flowing toward, an abundance," from O.Fr. affluence, from L. affluentia, noun of state from affluentem "flowing toward," prp. of affluere (see affluent). Sense of "wealth" attested from c.1600, from notion of "a plentiful flow" (of the gifts of fortune).

Example sentences

Wherever there is affluence, and a welfare state, people use their resources to

get places of their own.

The affluence of the last decades was not shared in a very equitable way .

Periods of affluence are followed by a yearning for the simple and primitive.

Otherwise, far from being sterile, the debate about equality should have become

more urgent with growing affluence.

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opulence plenty silvertail slick

Slang

under the affluence of incohol

Matching Quote

"Large department stores, with their luxuriant abundance of canned goods, foods, and clothing, are like the primary landscape and the geometrical locus of affluence. Streets with overcrowded and glittering store windows ... the displays of delicacies, and all the scenes of alimentary and vestimentary festivity, stimulate a magical salivation. Accumulation is more than the sum of its products: the conspicuousness of surplus, the final and magical negation of scarcity ... mimic a new-found nature of prodigious fecundity."

-Jean Baudrillard