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Cupidity vs Greed vs Rapacity vs Avarice

Cupidity, greed, rapacity, avarice are comparable when meaning intense desire for wealth or possessions.

Cupidity stresses the intensity and compelling nature of the desire and often suggests covetousness as well.

Greed, more than cupidity, implies a controlling passion; it suggests not strong but inordinate desire, and it commonly connotes meanness as well as covetousness.

Rapacity implies both cupidity and actual seizing or snatching not only of what one especially desires but of anything that will satisfy one’s greed for money or property; it often suggests extortion, plunder, or oppressive exactions.

Avarice, although it involves the idea of cupidity and often carries a strong suggestion of rapacity, stresses that of miserliness and implies both an unwillingness to let go whatever wealth or property one has acquired and an insatiable greed for more.