Perhaps from rapacity +‎ -ous, in any case ultimately from Latin rapāx (“grasping, greedy”).

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ɹəˈpeɪ.ʃəs/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪʃəs

rapacious (comparative more rapacious, superlative most rapacious)

1. (also figurative) Voracious; avaricious.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:greedy

   • 1787, Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 6: Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States:

     To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.

   • 1952 June, B. D. J. Walsh, “The Waveney Valley Line”, in Railway Magazine, page 365:

     Relations between the Waveney Valley Railway and the E.C.R. 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.

   • 2021 March 16, Noam Cohen, “Wikipedia Is Finally Asking Big Tech to Pay Up”, in Wired‎, →ISSN:

     Big Tech companies, on the other hand, have proven themselves to be rapacious capitalists—they take as much as they can and ask for permission later.

   • 2022, “Nevermore”, performed by Lamb of God:

     The rapacious maw of our despair

2. Given to taking by force or plundering; aggressively greedy.
   • 1910, Niccolò Machiavelli, “Chapter XIX”, in Ninian Hill Thomson, transl., The Prince:

     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. (of an animal, usually a bird) Subsisting off live prey.

   Synonyms: predacious, predatory

   • 1827, James Fenimore Cooper, “Chapter XIII”, in The Prairie:

     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

• The use of this term for animals other than birds is dated.

• rapaciously
• rapaciousness
• rapacity