QUOTE : Wealth comes from Middle English roots meaning “well-being” or “wellness,” a condition of happiness and good fortune closely aligned with health. It was not until the late Middle Ages that it took on its definite sense of financial or material riches. Common derives from French origins meaning “shared by all.” Because it is egalitarian, it has often been on the receiving end of aristocratic scorn: “common” is also low, unrefined, undistinguished, earthy. So Walter Raleigh, the courtier and double-fisted colonizer who planted migrants in Ulster and Virginia, defined commonwealth scornfully as a “depravation … the Government of the whole Multitude of the base and poorer Sort, without respect of the other Orders.” John Locke, by contrast, defined it as “any independent Community,” a self-governing polity that might be a monarchy, a democracy, or anything else. But there is an older sense of commonwealth that means “the general good” or the well-being of the whole community—the flourishing that is shared and open to all.