Learn English – Synonym to poor-rich pair

antonymssynonymsword-request

I am looking for a pair of antonymous words with meaning similar to poor-rich, but slightly different:

  • Word A (the synonym of poor) should mean "a person who has exactly enough for surviving, but not more".
  • Word B (the synonym of rich) should mean "a person who has more than enough for surviving".

Also, the words A and B should be a matching pair.

Looking at thethesaurus.com, I found the word "meager" which looks like a good candidate for word A. However, I am not sure what its counterpart should be for word B.

Best Answer

To answer your question specifically, here are some words that mean a person who is poor and some that mean a person who is rich:

Poor person: pauper, mendicant, guttersnipe
Rich person: baron, magnate, tycoon, moneybags

In these examples, the words for a rich person are less formal than the ones for a poor person. For a rich person, you can use these, if you're willing to use more than one word:

person of means, person of substance (both formal), fat cat, deep pocket

On the other hand, in your comments you ask for adjectives that can be applied to a person. Some of these are:

Poor: impecunious, strapped, needy, unprosperous
Rich: wealthy, affluent, well-heeled/well-off/well-to-to, moneyed, prosperous

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