rapaciousnessn.

1655 T. Fuller Church-hist. Brit. iii. 85 (margin) Their rapaciousness, and tenaciousness.

1660 R. Allestree Gentlemans Calling 47 He that hath the rapaciousness of a Wolf.

1711 J. Addison Spectator No. 55. ¶2 Raising fresh Supplies of Mony, by all the Methods of Rapaciousness and Corruption.

1743 H. Fielding Jonathan Wild xvi, in Misc. III. 409 His Rapaciousness was indeed so violent, that nothing ever contented him but the whole.

1781 E. Gibbon Decline & Fall II. xviii. 77 The opposite yet reconcileable vices of rapaciousness and prodigality.

1829 R. Southey Sir Thomas More (1831) II. 34 Its wealth exposes it to envy and rapaciousness.

1869 Atlantic Monthly July 76/2 He never carried any trunk with him. He had already sacrificed too much..to the rapaciousness of hotel-keepers and the villany [sic] of fly-by-night managers.

1912 Times 23 Mar. 8/6 All candidates share with the sovereign the character of general incompetency to fill the post, varying only in degrees of rapaciousness, avarice, and untruthfulness.

1962 P. Demetz Brecht 12 Brecht was again brooding over the question of how man, by nature good and charitable, may live in and resist a cruel universe of economic rapaciousness and exploding political evil.

2001 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 11 May e ii. 35 His long-necked, long-legged birds patrol their turf with true avian rapaciousness (particularly a hunting heron).