AVIDITY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does avidity mean? 

• AVIDITY (noun)
  The noun AVIDITY has 1 sense:

1. a positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something

  Familiarity information: AVIDITY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AVIDITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

avidity; avidness; eagerness; keenness

Hypernyms ("avidity" is a kind of...):

enthusiasm (a feeling of excitement)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "avidity"):

ardor; ardour; elan; zeal (a feeling of strong eagerness (usually in favor of a person or cause))

Derivation:

avid (marked by active interest and enthusiasm)

 Context examples 

But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

IgM binds with low affinity but high avidity (multiple binding sites) because it not only occurs as monomers but also as pentamers and hexamers.

(IgM, NCI Thesaurus)

A little more, St. John—look at the avidity in her eyes.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

My friend rubbed his thin hands together with an appearance of avidity which was a surprise to me, who knew his frugal tastes.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Not only did the story take with the fiction-readers, but those who read The Shame of the Sun with avidity were likewise attracted to the sea-story by the cosmic grasp of mastery with which he had handled it.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)