These words describe various kinds of insatiable desire for food, money, power or material possessions. Greedy is the most general word and is less formal than some of the other terms in this group. Although greedy can refer to a desire for money, power or property, it more commonly relates specifically to an inordinate desire for food.

• She stuffed one chocolate after another into that greedy mouth of hers; Greedy for land, speculators laid waste the virgin forests.

Greedy less readily suggests the use of unethical means in seeking satisfaction: Unless you discipline greedy child, he may grow up to be a selfish adult.

Avaricious is a more formal term than greedy and suggests an unbalanced, almost fanatic desire for money or possessions: The avaricious child lost his toys as soon as he got them, but still cried for more. The overtones possible in avaricious relate it to three much more informal words, gluttonous , stingy and miserly . Gluttonous puts the emphasis on consumption, most commonly of food.

• His gluttonous appetite made short work of all the left-overs in the refrigerator.

Stingy emphasizes a lack of generosity, especially the reluctance to spend money.

• She was so stingy that she never tipped a taxi driver.

Miserly refers more to the hoarding of money or property than to either the gluttonous consumption or the stingy use of it.

• Their miserly piling up of wealth had not made up for their inability to have children.

An avaricious person may be either gluttonous or miserly , depending on whether he consumes or merely possess his wealth. In either case, he may or may not be stingy when he does use it. Of these four words, avaricious perhaps carries the strongest suggestion of being willing to use unethical means to satisfy a given desire.

• The avaricious solicitor had cheated his own parents out of the title to their land.

Acquisitive is considerably more neutral in tone than any of these words. It suggests the actual process of coming into the possession of goods whether by fair means or foul. In being more externally descriptive, it puts the emphasis on the act rather than on the desire. A poor person might desire possessions, but he is not actually acquisitive until, by some means, he begins to assemble them.

• Thoreau argues that our acquisitive tendencies prevent us from living unburdened, joyous lives.

In contrast to the neutrality of acquisitive , rapacious is the most strongly negative of all these words. It blurs together desire and act, with overtones of brutality and violence. It emphasizes the taking of things against the will of others, by force or unethical means.

• He was so rapacious in his lust for money that he impoverished whole families at a time.

Envious and covetous are opposed to avaricious and especially to acquisitive in suggesting more the intense desire for something than the act of possessing it. The desired item, furthermore, must necessarily belong to someone else. Envious implies the greater passivity of the two, referring to a hostile or inverted admiration for the belongings of another. Sometimes the very impossibility of possessing them is the key.

• She would always be envious of her sister’s beauty.

Covetous is the more intense of the two and the less passive, shading off towards avaricious in its potential for being acted upon.

• The ninth and tenth commandments are a sharp condemnation of the covetous person.

Both words can apply to a wider range of desired goods or qualities than the other words grouped here.