rapacious

_rapacious_

Adjective.

Pronunciation and accent: rəpeɪʃəs.

It is dated from the beginning of 1600.

Etymology: from Latin rapax (= grasping) from rapere (= to seize, take by force, to snatch away) + -ous.

1. (Of a person) characterized by rapacity; disposed to seize by violence. Hence: immoderately eager for gain; accustomed to seize what is coveted, regardless of the illicitness of the action.

Synonyms: avaricious, covetous, rapacious.

Translation: rapace, in French; rapaz, in Spanish; rapace, in Italian.

When but a lad, attending upon these wild bands in their expeditions against the commerce of the Gulf, he chanced to attract the notice of the famous Captain Morgan, whilst that most rapacious of all the pirate leaders was preparing, at Jamaica, for his incursion against Maracaibo.

John Kennedy… Rob of the Bowl

-) With the preposition of + noun of what is coveted:

She was rapacious of money, extravagant to excess, loose in her conversation.

Henry Fielding… Joseph Andrews

Granting, however, that Vespasian was rapacious of money, it was not to hoard it or to squander it on pleasures.

Thomas Keightley… History of the Roman Empire

This makes him rapacious of all he can seize and appropriate to his own use.

Alethea Lewis… Rhoda

2. (Of a personal or animal quality, manner, etc.) characterized by rapacity; as, a rapacious appetite.

3. (Of an animal) characterized by rapacity; subsisting on prey; predacious; raptorial.

 It is, in fact, the only diurnal rapacious bird that preys in the thick of the forests and on the ground in these.

Robert Mudie… The feathered tribes of the British islands

Having described, in the last chapter, a tribe of minute, fierce, rapacious animals, I come now to a race of minute animals of a more harmless and gentle kind, that, without being enemies to any, are preyed upon by all.

Oliver Goldsmith… A history of the earth

English words derived from RAPACIOUS: rapaciously, rapacity.

Other English words derived from Latin rapere: rape, rapid, raper, rapidity, rapidly, rapine, rapt, raptor, raptorial, rapture, rapturous, rapturously, rapturousness, usurp, usurpation, usurpative, usurpatory, usurper, usurping, usurpress, surreption, surreptitious, surreptitiously, surreptitiousness.