richness

UK/ˈɹɪt͡ʃnəs/US/ˈɹɪt͡ʃnəs/

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,049 of 15,258leans written

Richness is depth and abundance of quality. The richness of the soil, richness of flavour, a richness of detail.

It is about concentration rather than quantity — a rich sauce is not a large one — which is why the word suits food, colour, soil and language. Species richness is a defined term in ecology, meaning how many different kinds are present. Note rich, which meant powerful before it meant wealthy.

Definitions of richness

1nounrichnessDepth and abundance of quality.B2+
“The richness of the chocolate cake meant nobody could eat more than a small slice.”

richness is a quality of depth.

Where it comes from

Middle English richenesse is rich plus -ness. Rich comes from a Germanic word meaning powerful, related to the Latin rex.

Middle English
richenesse
English, today
richness

Middle English richenesse; by surface analysis, rich + -ness.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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richness in the wild

Species richness is a simple count of species.
Species diversity
Species richness is the number of different species represented in an ecological community, landscape, or region.
Species richness
Media richness theory (MRT), sometimes referred to as information richness theory, is a framework used to describe a communication medium's ability to reproduce the information sent over it.
Media richness theory
MRT is used to rank and evaluate the richness of certain communication media, such as phone calls, video conferencing, and email.
Media richness theory

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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