rich man's disease
- noun
:
enfermedad del hombre rico
- Gout is often referred to as a rich man's disease.
Examples
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Doctors sometimes call gout the original rich man's disease.
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They once thought diabetes was only a rich man's disease.
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After years of indulgence, he was diagnosed with rich man's disease.
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Many people believe that stress is a rich man's disease.
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Doctors sometimes call gout the original rich man's disease.
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After years of indulgence, he was diagnosed with rich man's disease.
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Many people believe that stress is a rich man's disease.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'rich' (wealthy) + the possessive 'man's' + 'disease' (illness) yields an illness associated with rich people or their lifestyle. This is a literal, productive possessive construction found across many languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Rich man's disease comes from the old image of wealthy people who ate rich food and drank lots of wine, so they often got problems like gout or diabetes. So the words rich and man's point to a person with a 'luxurious' lifestyle, and the whole phrase means an 'illness linked to wealth or luxury'.
