greed
Americannoun
noun
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excessive consumption of or desire for food; gluttony
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excessive desire, as for wealth or power
Usage
What does greed mean? Greed is an excessive desire for more, especially for more money and possessions.The adjective greedy is used to describe people who are filled with greed, as in greedy billionaires, or actions that are based on greed, as in It was a greedy scheme to squeeze more money out of people. Greed and greedy are always used negatively to criticize the excessive desire for more.Greed is often thought to influence people to do bad things in their obsession to acquire more money or more stuff. In the expression “the love of money is the root of all evil,” the love of money is another way of saying greed.Less commonly, greed can mean the same thing as gluttony—an excessive desire for food.Example: Wall Street’s unrestrained greed has infected every part of American society, from politics to healthcare to education.
Related Words
Greed, greediness denote an excessive, extreme desire for something, often more than one's proper share. Greed means avid desire for gain or wealth (unless some other application is indicated) and is definitely uncomplimentary in implication: His greed drove him to exploit his workers. Greediness, when unqualified, suggests a craving for food; it may, however, be applied to all avid desires, and need not be always uncomplimentary: greediness for knowledge, fame, praise.
Other Word Forms
- greedless adjective
- greedsome adjective
Etymology
Origin of greed
First recorded in 1600–10; back formation from greedy
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.
Contemporaries were convinced that his motivation for publishing Mansfield’s ephemera wasn’t so much reverence for her talent as greed for hard cash.
“You should have more respect for fear. It’s the engine in all your human history, fear. Fear, married to greed, married to power.”
From Literature
Fear and a little greed made for an emotional market.
From Barron's
When we pointed out the labor contract’s job casualties last fall, Mr. O’Brien accused us in a letter of attacking him “by name to distract from the Teamsters’ success of reining in corporate greed.”
Deron Wagner, founder and CEO of Morpheus Trading Group, has adopted a psychology-first methodology to the stock market that prioritizes mastering emotions — fear, greed, hope and regret — before learning technical analysis.
From MarketWatch
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.
