What would you pay for a nice bunch of fresh flowers?
If you had been a Dutch citizen living in the mid-1630s, you may have spent more for fresh tulips than anyone would consider reasonable by today’s standards.
Why were these flowers considered so valuable?
As tulips became a coveted symbol of social status, the cost of the flowers rose with extraordinary speed.
In fact, at one point a single tulip bulb was reportedly worth the equivalent of an entire home in Amsterdam.
Such exorbitant (see definition and hear pronunciation below) prices couldn’t last for long, and in February 1637, the tulip market crashed.
No wonder these wild financial speculations were later dubbed “tulip mania”!
Cool word vocabulary question of the day: Have you ever bought something at an exorbitant price?
Exorbitant: Beyond what is fair or expected; unreasonably expensive.
Click to hear the pronunciation of exorbitant:
https://coolwordclub.com/wp-content/uploads/exorbitant.mp3
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