greed

Formsgreeds, greeding, greeded

1. 1
   selfish desirenoununcountable

   Wanting more than is needed or deserved in a selfish or excessive way, especially where money, wealth, food, or other possessions are concerned.

   Investigators blamed the bank's collapse on executive greed and lax oversight.

   She ate the last three cookies out of pure greed, not hunger.

   Similaravarice, greediness, covetousness, rapacity

   Oppositegenerosity, selflessness

   Note

   Greedy came first: around 1600 English clipped it to make this noun, so greed is a back-formation, not the root the adjective grew from. It is usually uncountable, but writers make it plural for separate appetites. Oliver Sacks sets one calm patient against others who display "voracities and greeds", and Thomas Firbank writes of "the greeds of wholesaler and retailer."

2. 2
   want selfishlyverbtransitive or intransitive

   To want something greedily, or to act greedily in order to get it.

   The ravens sit greeding, / And watching, and heeding: / Thoro' wind, over water, / Comes scent of the slaughter, / And ravens sit greeding / Their share of the bones.

   1848, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], Harold

   Similarhunger, lust

   Note

   As a verb the word works in three constructions. It can stand alone, as in Bulwer-Lytton's ravens that "sit greeding" for their share of the bones; it can take for, as in greeded for her; and it can take an object with off or out from under, meaning to grab something greedily from someone: "greeded the farm off an old man." The past is the regular greeded.

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