rapacious - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Perhaps from rapacity +‎ -ous, in any case ultimately from Latin rapāx (“grasping, greedy”).

rapacious (comparative more rapacious, superlative most rapacious)

  1. (also figurative) Voracious; avaricious.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:greedy
    • 1952 June, B. D. J. Walsh, “The Waveney Valley Line”, in Railway Magazine, page 365:
      Relations between the Waveney Valley Railway and the E.C.R. [Eastern Counties Railway] soon became strained, because of the rapacious attitude adopted by the latter, and to the mismanagement which it displayed in working the smaller company's line.
    • 2021 March 16, Noam Cohen, “Wikipedia Is Finally Asking Big Tech to Pay Up”, in Wired‎[1], →ISSN:
      Big Tech companies, on the other hand, have proven themselves to be rapacious capitalists—they take as much as they can and ask for permission later.
    • 2022, “Nevermore”, performed by Lamb of God:
      The rapacious maw of our despair
  2. Given to taking by force or plundering; aggressively greedy.
    • 1910, Niccolò Machiavelli, “Chapter XIX”, in Ninian Hill Thomson, transl., The Prince:
      A Prince […] sooner becomes hated by being rapacious and by interfering with the property and with the women of his subjects, than in any other way.
  3. (of an animal, usually a bird) Subsisting off live prey.
    Synonyms: predacious, predatory
    • 1827, James Fenimore Cooper, “Chapter XIII”, in The Prairie:
      Even the rapacious birds appeared to comprehend the nature of the ceremony, for […] they once more began to make their airy circuits above the place […]

avaricious

which subsists off live prey