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embarrassment of riches

noun

Etymology

Calque of French embarras des richesses, from John Ozell's 1738 translation of a French play, L'Embarras des richesses (1726) by Léonor Jean Christine Soulas d'Allainval.

  1. derived from play

Definitions

  1. An abundance or overabundance of something

    An abundance or overabundance of something; too much of a good thing.

    • Roger was in the library, trying to choose, from an embarrassment of riches, the ten of his father's books which he was to be permitted to take to the city.
    • What might be an embarrassment of riches—a city with three independent and artistically distinct opera companies—may become a lose-lose-lose situation.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for embarrassment of riches. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA