voracious applies especially to habitual gorging with food or drink.
teenagers are often voracious eaters
gluttonous applies to one who delights in eating or acquiring things especially beyond the point of necessity or satiety.
an admiral who was gluttonous for glory
ravenous implies excessive hunger and suggests violent or grasping methods of dealing with food or with whatever satisfies an appetite.
a nation with a ravenous lust for territorial expansion
rapacious often suggests excessive and utterly selfish acquisitiveness or avarice.
rapacious developers indifferent to environmental concerns
Examples of rapacious in a Sentence
nothing livens things up like a whole team of rapacious basketball players descending upon the pizza parlor rapacious mammals, such as coyotes, foxes, and bobcats
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The rapacious Chicago Teachers Union took advantage of an inexperienced Mayor Lori Lightfoot, ramming legislation through Springfield phasing out mayoral control of public schools.—Forrest Claypool, Chicago Tribune, 14 Mar. 2025 Such support might marginally improve Chad’s rapacious security sector.—Nathaniel K. Powell, Foreign Affairs, 1 Feb. 2016 To that end, his meeting with the notoriously rapacious lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who’d successfully prosecuted the Rosenbergs and served as Joseph McCarthy’s right hand in anti-Communist hearings, sets off a lucrative and sinister mentorship.—Scott Tobias, New York Times, 23 Jan. 2025 There are striking parallels between Deus Ex’s themes and Musk’s own intellectual interests, from transhumanism and rapacious capitalism through to conspiracy theories.—Lewis Gordon, Vulture, 14 Jan. 2025 See All Example Sentences for rapacious
Word History
Etymology
Latin rapāc-, rapāx "given to seizing or catching things (as prey), carrying away, excessively grasping" (from rapere "to seize and carry off" + -āc-, -āx, deverbal suffix denoting habitual or successful performance) + -ious — more at rapid entry 1, audacious
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