Make Your Point: RAPACIOUS

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pronounce RAPACIOUS:

ruh PAY shuss

connect this word to others:

(Source)

From the Latin word rapere, meaning "to seize, to carry away, to hurry away," we get quite a few English words, including raven and raptor (creatures that snatch and grab things), rapid (for things that hurry away), rapt (for when your attention has been grabbed), surreptitious (for things that seem to have been snatched away in an underhanded manner), and the word we're checking out today, rapacious.

Rapacious people and things are excessively greedy, aggressively grasping. They're ferocious, predatory, ravenous, m_r__ding (going around fiercely while taking what they want and/or doing damage), and pl___ering (stealing things, as if all hell is breaking loose and they're grabbing whatever they can in greed or desperation).

Can you recall those last two synonyms?

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)

definition:

"Rapacious" traces back to a Latin word for "snatch, grab, steal, or carry away."

We've used "rapacious" in English since the 1500s to describe extremely greedy people and behaviors, and since 1647 or so, we've applied it particularly to birds of prey.

So, if you refer to someone or something as rapacious, you mean it's extremely greedy in a way that preys on other people, stealing from them or even injuring or killing them, like a bird of prey.

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Adjective: "a rapacious army," "a rapacious dictator," "a rapacious investment banker."

Other forms:

The adverb is "rapaciously."

For a noun, I prefer "rapacity." Also acceptable is "rapaciousness."

how to use it:

"Rapacious" is a formal, semi-common word with a very negative tone. To say that a person (or a group of people) is rapacious is to compare them to greedy, hungry, sharp-clawed animals who put their own needs first. And last. Because they give zero hoots about anyone else.

You might apply the word "rapacious" to overly eager, overly greedy thieves, scammers, looters, negotiators, companies, or Black Friday shoppers. Anyone who reminds you of a bird of prey, swooping in to snatch up some helpless victim to gobble down, can be called rapacious.

examples:

"A rapacious hedge fund got its claws deeper into the Chicago Tribune chain in December."
— Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post, 14 February 2020

"As the medical industry has grown more rapacious, so insurance premiums have surged and patients have been required to make ever larger out-of-pocket payments that can amount to thousands of dollars a year."
— Chris McGreal, The Guardian, 19 March 2020

has this page helped you understand "rapacious"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this word, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "rapacious" without saying "avaricious" or "snatching and grabbing."

try it out:

Fill in the blanks: "A rapacious (person or group of people) (hurt someone), (damaging something)."

Example 1: "Rapacious scammers befriend lonely people online, eventually cleaning out their bank accounts."

Example 2: "A rapacious Japanese army occupied China, razing many homes in the process."
— Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, 2005

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game for April is "Interpret the Titles: Tim Curry Edition!"

Are you a fan of Tim Curry? (How could anyone not be?) Did you know his birthday is in April? I didn't until I looked it up, but it’s the perfect excuse to base this month's game on his filmography.

I'll give you the title of some show, movie, or video game that Tim Curry has starred in, along with a summary, and I'll challenge you to interpret the title in three different ways.

To see some examples, and some tips if you get stuck, head here!

Try this one today: "Dinosaurs" was a TV show running from 1991-1994 featuring Tim Curry as many minor characters. According to Dave Blake at IMDb: "The Dinosaurs are an animatronics stone-age working-class family... Incredibly overweight, even for a dinosaur, Earl Sinclair is married to Fran and tries and fails to support fourteen-year-old valley girl Charlene, sixteen-year-old Robbie (whose crest eventually turns into a mohawk and gets dyed purple), widowed, cranky Grandma Ethyl Phillips, and terrible-twos Baby Sinclair, the true master of the house. Sharp social commentary was featured surprisingly often. Earl is a tree-pusher for the Wesayso Development Corp., which regularly implements schemes to screw their workers even more and destroy the world for marginal profit increment. Chilled, but live prey, are kept in the refrigerator and are helpful when you can't find the milk, and caveman humans make occasional appearances as wild animals and pets."

1. It's titled "Dinosaurs" because... ?

2. It's titled "Dinosaurs" because... ?

3. It's titled "Dinosaurs" because... ?

To see some possible answers, scroll all the way down!

review this word:

1. A near opposite of RAPACIOUS is

A. PERCEPTIVE.
B. INDUSTRIOUS.
C. COMPASSIONATE.

2. In "Honey I Do," Josh Ritter sings about someone rapacious: someone who'll _____

A. "[eat] the apple 'cause the apple [is] sweet."
B. "smash and grab" and "wring your little heart like a rabbit."
C. "stick pins in the map of all the places where [they] thought that love would be found."

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.

I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.

From my blog:
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A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

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