Meaning & use

nabob

noun·Advanced

A person of great wealth or importance, especially one who made a fortune in a foreign country, particularly historically in India.

See it in a sentence

The retired executive lived like a nabob, throwing lavish parties in his mansion.

British nabobs who returned from India in the eighteenth century often built grand country estates.

A note on using this word

Nabob originally referred to Muslim provincial governors in the Mughal Empire, later applied to Europeans who grew rich in colonial India.

Words with a similar meaning

tycoonmagnate

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

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