RAPACITY • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Rapacity

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noun

Rapacity n.

The quality of being rapacious; rapaciousness; ravenousness; as, the rapacity of pirates; the rapacity of wolves.

The act or practice of extorting or exacting by oppressive injustice; exorbitant greediness of gain. "The rapacity of some ages."

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Etymology of 'Rapacity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Rapacity" Quotes from Famous Books

... the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy: but the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit, of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot, perhaps, be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the ...

— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... subject. But Lord Fawn had been aware that his sister had of late shifted the ground of her inveterate enmity to Lizzie Eustace, making use of the scene which Mr. Gowran had witnessed, in lieu of the lady's rapacity in regard to the necklace. It might therefore be assumed, Lord Fawn thought and feared, that his strong ground in regard to the necklace had been cut from under his feet. But still, it did not behove him to confess ...

— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... himself. The Austrian Minister said nobody would suspect Austria— no one could be suspected but Russia. But our experience for many years will tell us that there has been just as much menace from the West as from the East—the rapacity of the West is not less perceptible than that of the East. ['Hear.'] Some one expresses a sentiment in opposition —it is a gentleman who has never read the Blue Books—he does not know that almost the whole of this ...

— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... a question since the world began. Were not the children of Israel commanded to drive the Canaanites out of their own land? Did not the Romans carry conquests all over Europe? And the Spaniard here, who has been driven out for his cruelty and rapacity. The world question is a great tree at which many nations have a hack, and some of them get only the unripe fruit as the branches fall. But the fruit matures slowly, and some one will gather it in the end, that ...

— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... little man's appeal to my humanity against the supposed rapacity of Science, which he feared would have her "specimen," if his ghost should walk restlessly a thousand years, waiting for his bones to be laid in the dust, touched my heart. But I ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

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