avidity

From Middle English avidite, from Old French avidite (modern French avidité), from Latin aviditās (“avidity, covetousness”), equivalent to avid +‎ -ity.

• IPA^(key): /əˈvɪdɪti/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

avidity (usually uncountable, plural avidities)

1. Greediness; strong appetite.
2. Eagerness; intenseness of desire.

   to eat with avidity

   • 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter LII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. , volume III, London: Henry Colburn, , →OCLC, page 46:

     Still, there was an inquiry after me, the 'who was she?' that never can, that never must be answered; and it was pursued with only the more avidity, because my accomplishments proved that I had been expensively educated, and nature had stamped me with her own kindly distinctions.

   • 1881, W. S. Gilbert, Patience:

     Come, walk up, and purchase with avidity, / Overcome your diffidence and natural timidity.

   • 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider ”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A Munsey Company, , published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), page 373, column 2:

     Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy—[…]—distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its flavor.

3. (biochemistry) The measure of the synergism of the strength of individual interactions between proteins.

• (intenseness of desire): eagerness, alacrity, enthusiasm, liveliness