From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishrapaciousra‧pa‧cious /rəˈpeɪʃəs/ adjective formal GREEDYalways wanting more money, goods etc than you need or have a right to SYN greedy rapacious landlords —rapaciously adverb —rapacity /rəˈpæsəti/ noun [uncountable]
Examples from the Corpus
rapacious• Gregory regarded these claims as being marks of particular wickedness, and he saw the Merovingians as being, for the most part, rapacious.• Their officers, though more sophisticated, were equally rapacious.• The principle of rapacious egoism, Shakespeare shows, does not let up once it has achieved its first-formulated goal.• In Shakespeare, hypocrisy is linked inseparably with that rapacious egoism that is willing to destroy all in order to advance itself.• They haven't done anything about the rapacious exploitation of the poor in the ghetto.• These factors must bulk larger in the explanation of depopulation than the sixteenth-century writers' scapegoat, the rapacious landlords.• rapacious real estate developers• It was a horrendous, rapacious strategy that they had used to gain control of their own home system.Origin rapacious (1600-1700) Latin rapax, from rapere; → RAPE1 