rapacious

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: ra=pa=cious

CIDE DICTIONARY

rapacious, a. [L. rapax, -acis, from rapere to seize and carry off, to snatch away. See Rapid.].

•  Given to plunder; disposed or accustomed to seize by violence; seizing by force.  Motley.  [1913 Webster]
•  Accustomed to seize food; subsisting on prey, or animals seized by violence; as, a tiger is a rapacious animal; a rapacious bird.  [1913 Webster]
•  Avaricious; grasping; extortionate; also, greedy; ravenous; voracious; as, rapacious usurers; a rapacious appetite.  [1913 Webster]

  "[Thy Lord] redeem thee quite from Death's rapacious claim"  [1913 Webster]

Syn. -- Greedy; grasping; ravenous; voracious.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

rapacious, adj. grasping, extortionate, predatory.

Derivative

rapaciously adv. rapaciousness n. rapacity n.

Etymology

L rapax -acis f. rapere snatch

THESAURUS

rapacious

Apician, a hog for, acquisitive, all-devouring, all-engulfing, avaricious, avid, bloodsucking, bolting, bottomless, coveting, covetous, cramming, crapulent, crapulous, devouring, edacious, esurient, extortionate, ferocious, fierce, glutting, gluttonizing, gluttonous, gobbling, gorging, grabby, grasping, greedy, gulping, guttling, guzzling, hoggish, hyperphagic, insatiable, insatiate, intemperate, limitless, lupine, mercenary, miserly, money-hungry, money-mad, omnivorous, overgreedy, parasitic, piggish, polyphagic, predacious, predatory, quenchless, raptorial, ravening, ravenous, sharkish, slakeless, sordid, stuffing, swinish, unappeasable, unappeased, unquenchable, unsated, unsatisfied, unslakeable, unslaked, usurious, venal, voracious, vulturine, vulturous, wolfing, wolfish

ROGET THESAURUS

rapacious

Taking

N taking, reception, deglutition, appropriation, prehension, prensation, capture, caption, apprehension, deprehension, abreption, seizure, expropriation, abduction, ablation, subtraction, withdrawal, abstraction, ademption, adrolepsy, dispossession, deprivation, deprivement, bereavement, divestment, disherison, distraint, distress, sequestration, confiscation, eviction, rapacity, rapaciousness, extortion, vampirism, theft, resumption, reprise, reprisal, recovery, clutch, swoop, wrench, grip, haul, take, catch, scramble, taker, captor, subduction, taking, privative, prehensile, predaceous, predal, predatory, predatorial, lupine, rapacious, raptorial, ravenous, parasitic, bereft, at one fell swoop, give an inch and take an ell.

Greed

N greed, covetousness, ravenousness, venality, avidity, cupidity, acquisitiveness (acquisition), desire, greed, greediness, avarice, avidity, rapacity, extortion, selfishness, auri sacra fames, grasping, craving, canine appetite, rapacity, greedy, avaricious, covetous, acquisitive, grasping, rapacious, lickerish, greedy as a hog, overeager, voracious, ravenous, ravenous as a wolf, openmouthed, extortionate, exacting, sordid, alieni appetens, insatiable, insatiate, unquenchable, quenchless, omnivorous.

Parsimony

N parsimony, parcity, parsimoniousness, stinginess, stint, illiberality, tenacity, avarice, greed, miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm, scrimp, lickpenny, hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer, Hessian, pinch fist, pinch penny, parsimonious, penurious, stingy, miserly, mean, shabby, peddling, scrubby, penny wise, near, niggardly, close, fast handed, close handed, strait handed, close fisted, hard fisted, tight fisted, tight, sparing, chary, grudging, griping, illiberal, ungenerous, churlish, hidebound, sordid, mercenary, venal, covetous, usurious, avaricious, greedy, extortionate, rapacious, with a sparing hand, desunt inopioe multa avaritiae omnia, hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill, the unsunn'd heaps of miser's treasures.