Avaricious
adj ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Actuated by avarice; extremely greedy for wealth or material gain; immoderately desirous of accumulating property.
"In a word, he was called a hard, avaricious, rapacious man, whose chief business was to enrich himself..."
- 1 immoderately desirous of acquiring e.g. wealth wordnet
Example
More examples"Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable for some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan term (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who desires to possess by robbery, whilst we call one miserly who deprives himself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous, one rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere, another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous; one religious, another unbelieving, and the like."
Etymology
From Middle English avaricious, from Old French avaricieux, from avarice, from Latin avaritia (“greed”), from avarus (“greedy”), of avere (“crave, long for”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.