as in greed
an intense selfish desire for wealth or possessions
the rapacity of the Spanish conquistadors was such that they were undeterred by the very preposterousness of the legend of El Dorado
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Recent Examples of rapacity
In recent books, French has borrowed elements of the western genre to explore corporate rapacity in the era of climate change and looked at life in a small Irish village with the ear to both insider and outsider.
—
Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 2025
Adjacent to the Gold Room was the Bravo Bazaar, a mall of real commercial rapacity.
—Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 17 Nov. 2023
The rapacity with which Edmund followed his prey is painful to read: To extort money from the merchant haberdasher Thomas Sunnyff and his wife, Agnes, for example, Edmund framed them for infanticide and threw them in jail.
—Catherine Ostler, WSJ, 24 Mar. 2023
Nor has there ever been a time when the link between our rapacity and our present misery has felt as clear.
—Aatish Taseer, New York Times, 16 Feb. 2023
According to the American Trucking Associations, though, the trucker shortage is quite real—the product of an aging workforce, the industry’s struggle to recruit women, and the ballooning of freight volumes thanks to our rapacity as consumers.
—Andrew Kay, WIRED, 17 Jan. 2023
For decades, sustainability efforts have focused on repair rather than renewal; at the same time, technological progress has plundered natural resources with increasing rapacity, and labor costs have outpaced material costs.
—Longreads, 23 Sep. 2022
Or consider the explorers who left a cold and hungry Europe in search of tropical riches, only to realize that their own rapacity could quickly exhaust the bounty of an island paradise.
—Deborah R. Coen, Foreign Affairs, 12 Feb. 2014
Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 2025
Adjacent to the Gold Room was the Bravo Bazaar, a mall of real commercial rapacity.
—Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 17 Nov. 2023
The rapacity with which Edmund followed his prey is painful to read: To extort money from the merchant haberdasher Thomas Sunnyff and his wife, Agnes, for example, Edmund framed them for infanticide and threw them in jail.
—Catherine Ostler, WSJ, 24 Mar. 2023
Nor has there ever been a time when the link between our rapacity and our present misery has felt as clear.
—Aatish Taseer, New York Times, 16 Feb. 2023
According to the American Trucking Associations, though, the trucker shortage is quite real—the product of an aging workforce, the industry’s struggle to recruit women, and the ballooning of freight volumes thanks to our rapacity as consumers.
—Andrew Kay, WIRED, 17 Jan. 2023
For decades, sustainability efforts have focused on repair rather than renewal; at the same time, technological progress has plundered natural resources with increasing rapacity, and labor costs have outpaced material costs.
—Longreads, 23 Sep. 2022
Or consider the explorers who left a cold and hungry Europe in search of tropical riches, only to realize that their own rapacity could quickly exhaust the bounty of an island paradise.
—Deborah R. Coen, Foreign Affairs, 12 Feb. 2014
Recent Examples of Synonyms for rapacity
greed
Noun
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The political and economic geography of the copperbelt, the mining zone that snakes under Katanga and northern Zambia, has been fashioned by external forces and outside greed since at least the time of Belgian colonization.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
22 Jan. 2026
-
Industry is where innocence goes to die, choked out in bed by various personifications of greed.—
Judy Berman,
Time,
19 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Rapacity.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/rapacity. Accessed 30 Jan. 2026.
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