rags to riches

• rags-to-riches

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.) By surface analysis, a change from wearing ragged clothing (due to being impoverished) to obtaining a lot of money.

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rags to riches

1. (chiefly attributive) From poverty to exceptional wealth.

   Antonym: riches to rags

   • 2016 [2008], Janice Peck, Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era, Routledge, →ISBN, page IV:

     […] and finally [Oprah Winfrey] declared herself not only “a believer in the American dream of rags to riches” but living proof of its veracity.

• (from poverty to wealth) self-made, Horatio Alger
• (from low social station to high) go from zero to hero
• (antonymic contrast) nepotism, nepo baby

• rags to riches on Wikipedia.Wikipedia