rags to riches
Speech parts
1. rags to riches - Noun
2. rags to riches - Phrase
Meaning
rags to riches
(chiefly attributive) From poverty to exceptional wealth.
rags-to-riches
Alternative form of rags to riches
Alternative names
rags-to-riches
Examples
The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches - with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone - was once at the core of the American Dream.
Well, that's baseball. Rags to riches one day and riches to rags the next. But I've been in it thirty-six years and I'm used to it.
Rags to riches to rags.
An immigrant from Russia, his life became the "classic rags-to-riches story that he never forgot could have happened only in America."
Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the " American dream personified."
It was a rags-to-riches romantic comedy about a Jewish family's upward mobility in New York City, with their son later trying to deny his Jewish roots in order to keep his rich gentile girlfriend.