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AVARICE
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins)
Synonyms:
avarice; avaritia; covetousness; greed; rapacity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("avarice" is a kind of...):
deadly sin; mortal sin (an unpardonable sin entailing a total loss of grace)
Derivation:
avaricious (immoderately desirous of acquiring e.g. wealth)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Extreme greed for material wealth
Synonyms:
avarice; avariciousness; covetousness; cupidity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("avarice" is a kind of...):
greed (excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves)
Derivation:
avaricious (immoderately desirous of acquiring e.g. wealth)
Context examples:
In such a situation as that, where there seemed nothing to tempt the avarice or the vanity of any living creature, how could I suppose, when she so earnestly, so warmly insisted on sharing my fate, whatever it might be, that any thing but the most disinterested affection was her inducement?
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Therefore since money alone was able to perform all these feats, our Yahoos thought they could never have enough of it to spend, or to save, as they found themselves inclined, from their natural bent either to profusion or avarice; that the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man’s labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former; that the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small wages, to make a few live plentifully.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
My master said, he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a Yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice which I had ascribed to mankind.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
