affluent

plural affluents

1. Someone who is wealthy.

   The affluents are most similar to the professional want-it-alls in their reasons for preferring specific hospitals and in their demographic characteristics.

   1994, Philip D. Cooper, Health care marketing: a foundation for managed quality, page 183

   Synonyms: capitalist, fat cat, HNWI, moneybags, rich person

2. A stream or river flowing into a larger river or into a lake; a tributary stream; a tributary.

   The affluents of the Amazon are, half of them, of this nature, while the other half are whitish and opaque, the difference depending upon the class of country through which they have flowed.

   1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC

   2 more examples

   It [Central Asia] is separated from the river-system of the Aral and Caspian Seas, […] from the affluents of the Indus and Ganges, on the south, by the chain of the Küen-lün, the rival of the Himalayas, […]

   1874, Bayard Taylor, compiler, “The Countries of Central Asia”, in Central Asia. Travels in Cashmere, Little Tibet, and Central Asia (Illustrated Library of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure), New York, N.Y.: Scribner, Armstrong, and Company, →OCLC, page 7

   Its sources are everywhere in pine-clad mountains and plateaus, but all of the affluents quickly descend into the desert valley below, through which the Gila winds its way westward to the Colorado.

   1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 20

   Synonyms: influent

comparative more affluent · superlative most affluent

1. Abundant; copious; plenteous.

   The shores are affluent in beauty, and incomparably lovely is the drive to the heights of Castel-a-Mare.

   1860, Mary Howitt, transl., Life in the Old World

2. broadlyAbounding in goods or riches; having a moderate level of material wealth.

   They were affluent, but aspired to true wealth.

   3 more examples

   The Upper East Side is an affluent neighborhood in New York City.

   One reason, the department suggested, was that affluent New Yorkers were likely to eat expensive fish high in mercury, like swordfish and tuna.

   2008 January 30, Nick Fox, “Taking Worry Off the Plate”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 05 May 2021

   Nevertheless, it is clear that the global energy demand for air-conditioning will grow substantially as nations become more affluent, with the consequences of climate change potentially accelerating the demand.

   2013 September-October, Michael Sivak, “Will AC Put a Chill on the Global Energy Supply?”, in American Scientist

3. datedTributary.
4. obsoleteFlowing to; flowing abundantly.

   affluent blood

   1672, Gideon Harvey, Morbus Anglicus, Or, The Anatomy of Consumptions