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WotD: Nouveau riche
The nouveau riche are easy to spot once you know what to look for.
Nouveau riche is French for the new rich and is used for people who have recently become wealthy.
These people do not come from money and quite possibly come from lower social classes.
For that reason, they tend to be ostentatious in their tastes.
The newly riche tend to gravitate towards flashy clothing, cars and jewellery.
Likewise, their homes are oversized monstrosities with little, if any, architectural appeal.
The nouveau riche also likes to show off their wealth by splashing cash around.
In a bar, for example, they will be the ones purchasing super expensive, oversized bottles of champagne.
Old money, in contrast, tends to be much more sophisticated in their tastes and feels no need to impress others through conspicuous consumption.
People who were born into affluent families may look down on the nouveau riche as having no class or style.
These are the people who are not impressed by money itself because they have always been around others who are both rich and influential.
Having much wealth and opulence is a normal state of affairs for them.
Vast amounts of wealth may go to the heads of the nouveau riche.
They were not born rich, and the relatively sudden accumulation of wealth signifies a great change in their lifestyle.
The nouveau riche have not acquired sophisticated tastes, so they merely copy what they have seen on TV or purchase more gaudy versions of daily-use items for the middle class.
The next time you see a person dressed in expensive but cheap-looking finery, there is a good chance they are a member of the nouveau riche.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
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On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 65.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.