affluence

Etymology

It is partly borrowed from Middle French affluence and partly borrowed from Latin affluentia (“flow, abundance, sumptuousness”).^[2][3][4] Etymonline and the Middle English Dictionary name Old French as the immediate source.^[5][6] The Latin noun is formed on affluēns (“flowing to, abounding, rich”), the present participle of affluō (“to flow toward”),^[2][7][5] from ad- (“to”) and fluō (“to flow”).^[7][8] Old English glossed the Latin word with oferflowendnys, in Ælfric's vocabulary.^[5] Compare Spanish afluencia (late 14th century) and Italian affluenza (1305).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

An abundant flow or supply: about 1390, in the legend of Saint Augustine, of a saint who flourished "wiþ affluence wonderliche in teching", a text the OED and the Middle English Dictionary tentatively date to about 1350.^[2][6] Etymonline likewise dates the word to the mid-14th century.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Latin the word already meant both a flow and abundance, and its later history follows the figurative idea of a plentiful flow of fortune's gifts.^[5][2] In Middle French it often referred to worldly possessions from the late 14th century,^[2] and the same sense appears in English in 1593, in Nashe, as wealth or prosperity.^[2][9] Etymonline dates this sense about 1600.^[5] The literal idea of flowing towards a place came separately, in the 1579 sense of a crowd moving in one direction,^[2] and in the 1615 sense of a flow of liquid or energy, especially within the body.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it first as the act of flowing to a place, "almost always used figuratively", and then as "exuberance of riches".^[10]

Timeline

• c. 1390 – an abundant flow or supply; profusion.^[2][6]
• 1579 – a general movement of people, a moving crowd, in Fenton's translation of Guicciardini.^[2]
• 1593 – abundance of money or possessions; wealth, in Nashe.^[2][9]
• 1615 – a flow of liquid or energy towards a place, especially within the body, in Crooke.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Abundance of money or property; wealth: a family that lived in affluence.^[11][3][2]
2. (rare) An abundant flow or supply, as of words or feelings; profusion.^[11][3][2]
3. A flow towards a point; influx, as of people.^[3][2]

Word family

• superaffluence

Related words

• affluent
• influence
• effluence
• fluent
• affluenza

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
7. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins