covet
Americanverb (used with object)
-
covets,
present (3rd person singular)
-
coveted,
past participle, past
-
coveting
present participle
-
to desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others.
to covet another's property.
- Antonyms:
- renounce
-
to wish for, especially eagerly.
He won the prize they all coveted.
verb (used without object)
-
covets,
present (3rd person singular)
-
coveted,
past participle, past
-
coveting
present participle
verb
Synonym Usage
See envy.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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covetsimple
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covetssimple
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have covetedperfect
-
has covetedperfect
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am covetingprogressive
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are covetingprogressive
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is covetingprogressive
-
have been covetingperfect progressive
-
has been covetingperfect progressive
Past
-
covetedsimple
-
had covetedperfect
-
was covetingprogressive
-
were covetingprogressive
-
had been covetingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of covet
First recorded in 1325–1350; Middle English coveiten, from Anglo-French coveiter, Old French coveit(i)er, from unattested Vulgar Latin cupiditāre, verbal derivative of Latin cupiditās cupidity
Explanation
If you covet something, you eagerly desire something that someone else has. If it's 95 degrees out and humid, you may find yourself coveting your neighbor's air conditioner. If the word covet sounds familiar, you're thinking of the Tenth Commandment: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." Basically this means you should be happy with your electronic gadgets and not be jealous when a friend gets something better.
Vocabulary lists containing covet
300 Most Difficult "SAT" Words
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The Crucible
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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.
See Examples For:
All this puts it at the heart of Chinese and US economic interests and they actively covet it.
From Barron's ● Jun. 26, 2026
He is thought to covet the role of chancellor, having spent many years advising Gordon Brown in the Treasury under New Labour.
From BBC ● Jun. 19, 2026
That has allowed the show to meet younger people where they are and to stay relevant with viewers in the 18-to-34 age bracket that advertisers covet.
From MarketWatch ● May 7, 2026
Trump administration officials covet the minerals; getting them won’t be easy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 26, 2026
The matches are wooden ones, in a cardboard sliding-top box, the kind I used to covet in order to make dolls’ drawers out of them.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
Or, according to an erratic transactional logic in which force would no longer serve freedom but replace it, an allied nation: Denmark, whose Greenland he covets?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 7, 2026
He makes no secret of the way he covets the mineral wealth of other countries.
From BBC ● Jan. 4, 2026
Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government covets Chinese investment to spur a struggling economy and is pondering a request from Beijing to build a controversial new embassy building in London.
From Barron's ● Oct. 13, 2025
Sure, go for it, if he really, deep down covets the Oval Office.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2024
She sighs like I'm bothering her and it's an imposition for her to tell me, but I know she covets the attention.
From "The Belles" by Dhonielle Clayton
Among other armaments, the Mechernich special site is home to parts for US-made Patriot air-defence systems long coveted by Kyiv.
From Barron's ● Aug. 8, 2026
United gave his coveted number 10 shirt to new arrival Matheus Cunha.
From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2026
The most coveted shoe models, which the company manufactures in limited runs, can fetch three or four times more than their retail value on the resale market.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 5, 2026
For nearly a decade now, the Rams have been known for throwing caution to the wind and shipping away coveted draft capital in order to build a star-studded roster.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026
For kite runners, the most coveted prize was the last fallen kite of a winter tournament.
From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
But Fernandes is not one for coveting individual awards.
From BBC ● May 8, 2026
Now he is vying for votes in a military-managed poll starting on Sunday, coveting the former seat of the country's best known political prisoner -- Aung San Suu Kyi.
From Barron's ● Dec. 23, 2025
Then Coop launches into a meticulous description of what makes each item worth coveting.
From Salon ● Apr. 11, 2025
While these acquisition targets never came to fruition, the emails show Microsoft’s years of coveting Activision Blizzard leading up to its $69-billion proposed acquisition last January.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2023
They looked a long time in Lee’s window coveting the pliers, the hack saws, the engineers’ caps and the bananas.
From "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck
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.
