treasure
Americannoun
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wealth or riches stored or accumulated, especially in the form of precious metals, money, jewels, or plate.
- Synonyms:
- hoard
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wealth, rich materials, or valuable things.
-
any thing or person greatly valued or highly prized.
This book was his chief treasure.
noun
-
wealth and riches, usually hoarded, esp in the form of money, precious metals, or gems
-
a thing or person that is highly prized or valued
verb
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to prize highly as valuable, rare, or costly
-
to store up and save; hoard
Other Word Forms
- treasurable adjective
- treasureless adjective
- untreasurable adjective
- untreasured adjective
Etymology
Origin of treasure
First recorded in 1125–75; (for the noun) Middle English tresor, from Old French, from Gallo-Romance trēsaurus (unrecorded), from Latin thēsaurus “storehouse, hoard” ( thesaurus ); verb derivative of the noun
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Geoffrey McQuilkin, executive director of the nonprofit Mono Lake Committee, urged the state water board to act, saying in three decades DWP “has shown that it will not restore this national treasure voluntarily.”
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 21, 2026
A US deep-sea treasure hunter who refused to disclose the location of a famed shipwreck's gold coins has been released from prison after a decade, with 500 coins still unaccounted for.
From BBC • Mar. 14, 2026
Wars destroy lives, waste treasure and usually are unpopular.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 12, 2026
For a reporter on the Fed beat, Greenspan was a treasure.
From Barron's • Feb. 27, 2026
“We need to take the treasure to the authorities and then Marco and Cook will never get their hands on it.”
From "The Boy Who Met a Whale" by Nizrana Farook
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.