Riches; money, or precious goods : the lexis of wealth in modern English

The study aims at analysing those lexemes such as commerce, money, manufacture and labour which represent the conceptual/linguistic heritage of those great changes in 18th-century British society and customs. The encyclopaedic headwords and their respective articles systematize/lexicalize the huge 'business' challenge characterizing British domestic and foreign affairs: they ultimately lexicalize 'wealth' in its multifarious aspects, as essentially conceived by the upper and middling classes. New 'wealthy'-words and new discursive practices emerge to represent new values, new habits and new consumer goods.