- 1貪婪的、掠奪成性的、貪得無厭的
Rapacious means always wanting more money, goods, or land than you need or have a right to, and grabbing for it. It is greed with a taking hand. Writers use it of companies, landlords, and strong people who squeeze others; it is a formal, rather hard word, closer to news and books than to the dinner table. Everyday English is more likely to say greedy or grabbing. Greedy can be a child with cake; rapacious adds 'too much, and not theirs to take'. Though actually, people do stretch it a little: a rapacious appetite is a huge hungry one, still with that grabbing feel, even when money is not the point. It is not praise.
組成Perhaps from rapacity + -ous; in any case it goes back to Latin rapax (grasping, greedy) + the English ending -acious.
同家族的字
- rapacitythe noun: that grabbing greed itself
- rapaciouslythe adverb: in that grabbing, never-enough way
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
rapaciousadj/ɹəˈpeɪ.ʃəs/
- 1
Voracious; avaricious.
- To presume a want of motives for such contests [of power between states] as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.
- Relations between the Waveney Valley Railway and the E.C.R. [Eastern Counties Railway] soon became strained, because of the rapacious attitude adopted by the latter, and to the mismanagement which it displayed in working the smaller company's line.
- 2
Given to taking by force or plundering; aggressively greedy.
- A Prince […] sooner becomes hated by being rapacious and by interfering with the property and with the women of his subjects, than in any other way.
- 3
Subsisting off live prey.
- Even the rapacious birds appeared to comprehend the nature of the ceremony, for […] they once more began to make their airy circuits above the place[…]
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。