rapacious
Americanadjective
-
given to seizing for plunder or the satisfaction of greed.
-
inordinately greedy; predatory; extortionate.
a rapacious disposition.
- Antonyms:
- generous
-
(of animals) subsisting by the capture of living prey; predacious.
adjective
-
practising pillage or rapine
-
greedy or grasping
-
(of animals, esp birds) subsisting by catching living prey
Related Words
See avaricious.
Other Word Forms
- rapaciously adverb
- rapaciousness noun
- rapacity noun
- unrapacious adjective
- unrapaciously adverb
Etymology
Origin of rapacious
First recorded in 1645–55; from Latin rapāci- (stem of rapāx “greedy,” akin to rapere “to seize”; rape 1 ) + -ous
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 softens the character’s steely edges, turning a proud and almost rapacious woman into a mere doting mom.
"The Moment" satirises the consequences of her hit 2024 album "brat", as rapacious record company executives and a film director played by Alexander Skarsgard seek to jump on the juggernaut.
From Barron's
Don’t blame rapacious owners for the loss of public trust.
While still in New Zealand, suffocating in suburban Wellington, she had described herself as a “restless soul” with “a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse.”
Threaded with fiddle, piano and lead vocal by his son Jaime, “Nashville Skyline” is an elegy for Nashville’s rapacious gentrification as well as a love lost to time.
From Los Angeles Times
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.
