greedy
Americanadjective
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excessively or inordinately desirous of wealth, profit, etc..
The greedy owners of the company paid their employees too little and charged their customers too much.
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having an excessive desire for food or drink.
That greedy guy ate four of those brownies before anyone else got any!
- Synonyms:
- insatiable, gluttonous, voracious, ravenous
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keenly desirous; eager (often followed by of orfor ).
greedy for praise.
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requiring or using much of a specified thing (often used in combination).
These big trucks are fuel-greedy.
Crops that are greedy for water should not be planted in dry regions.
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Computers.
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of or relating to an algorithm, search, etc., that operates one step at a time instead of checking all possible paths or solutions all at once and then selecting the one with the best overall outcome.
A result may be achieved faster with a greedy search, but that result is not always the correct or best one.
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of or relating to an operator or quantifier in a search query that will return the largest match result possible.
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adjective
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excessively desirous of food or wealth, esp in large amounts; voracious
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eager (for)
a man greedy for success
Usage
What does greedy mean? Greedy means filled with greed—an excessive desire for more, especially for more money and possessions.It can be used to describe people, 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 being greedy.Less commonly, greedy can mean the same thing as gluttonous—having an excessive desire for food.Example: These greedy hedge fund managers have more money than they can spend in a lifetime, yet they insist on trying to get away with paying the least amount of taxes possible.
Related Words
See avaricious, greed.
Other Word Forms
- greedily adverb
- greediness noun
- nongreedy adjective
- overgreedily adverb
- overgreediness noun
- overgreedy adjective
- ungreedy adjective
Etymology
Origin of greedy
First recorded before 900; Middle English gredy, Old English grædig; cognate with Old Norse grāthugr, Gothic gredags
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.
She’s always thought Mom was greedy and selfish.
From Literature
The old woman sitting by the fire sniffed the air and smacked her lips with a greedy sound.
From Literature
When the market mob is too greedy, or too afraid—and that is the essence of a huge move, up or down—options-centric investors look to buy on fear and sell on overconfidence.
From Barron's
He was petrified of water, and he was greedy when it came to sweets.
From Literature
Grandma Edem had made good money from her clam picking and trading and had left gold jewelry for all her children, but it was being hoarded by Ma’s older sister and her greedy husband.
From Literature
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.
