| English Dictionary |
AVARICIOUS
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Dictionary entry overview: What does avaricious mean?
• AVARICIOUS (adjective)
The adjective AVARICIOUS has 1 sense:
1. immoderately desirous of acquiring e.g. wealth
Familiarity information: AVARICIOUS used as an adjective is very rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Immoderately desirous of acquiring e.g. wealth
Synonyms:
avaricious; covetous; grabby; grasping; greedy; prehensile
Context example:
prehensile employers stingy with raises for their employees
Similar:
acquisitive (eager to acquire and possess things especially material possessions or ideas)
Derivation:
avarice (reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins))
avarice; avariciousness (extreme greed for material wealth)
Context examples
And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Avaricious farmers hunted him with shot-guns.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
He was not mean, nor avaricious, but the money meant more than so many dollars and cents.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
How I had a grasping, avaricious wish to shut out everybody from her but myself, and to be all in all to her, at that unseasonable time of all times.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
That Mr. W. has been for years deluded and plundered, in every conceivable manner, to the pecuniary aggrandisement of the avaricious, false, and grasping—HEEP.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
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