greed

plural greeds

1. uncountableusuallyA selfish or excessive desire for more than is needed or deserved, especially of money, wealth, food, or other possessions.

   His greed was his undoing.

   4 more examples

   […]But when I had bestridden the plank, quoth I to myself, "Thou deserveth all that betideth thee. All this is decreed to me of Allah (whose name be exalted!), to turn me from my greed of gain, whence ariseth all that I endure, for I have wealth galore."

   1885, Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 564

   Your market gardener is not a well-breeched man, dependant as he is on the imponderables of glut, the inequities of distribution, and the greeds of wholesaler and retailer.

   1954, Thomas Firbank, Log Hut, page 194

   She does not display voracities and greeds like a number of patients […] nor has she shown any significant tendency to possessiveness, grievance, paranoia, or mania.

   1973, Oliver Sacks, Awakenings

   The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.

   1987, Stanley Weiser, Oliver Stone, Wall Street (motion picture), spoken by Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas)

   Synonyms: avarice, covetousness, greediness, rapacity, gluttony, avarice, covetise, covetousness

present singular third person greeds · participle present greeding · participle past greeded · past greeded

1. To desire in a greedy manner, or to act on such a desire.

   This conniving bastard has greeded the farm off an old man and I end up with nothing.

   2008, Leonard Warwick, The Unspoken, page 284

   2 more examples

   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], chapter XI, in Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings; […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, book XI (The Norman Schemer, and the Norwegian Sea-king), page 218

   Hearing these words he arose, because indeed he greeded for her, and came up behind her as she rested upon her elbows and knees and bending in hand his prickle nailed it into her coynte and did manly devoir.

   1885, Sir Richard Francis Burton, A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights

   1. informaljargonTo play greedily or aggressively in a high-risk, high-reward scenario.