grasping
/ˈɡrɑːspɪŋ
/adjective
Avaricious; greedy: they were regarded as grasping landlords...
- A grasping and greedy ethos seems to be what grips most of our citizens.
- It's a grasping, greedy society, fuelled by educational expectation and privilege.
- She hid it under the carpets to keep it from the grasping claws of her greedy brother, who was a man not averse to physical violence and who put pressure on everybody to help him service his frequent debts.
Synonyms
avaricious, acquisitive, greedy, rapacious, grabbing, usurious, covetous, venal;
mercenary, materialistic, money-oriented;
mean, miserly, parsimonious, niggardly, scrimping, penny-pinching, cheese-paring, hoarding, selfish, possessive, close;
North American forehanded
informal tight-fisted, tight, stingy, money-grubbing, money-grabbing, on the make
North American informal cheap, grabby
Australian/New Zealand informal hungry
vulgar slang tight-arsed
Derivatives
graspingly
- On the other hand, this doesn't mean that we have to kowtow to the disingenuous, the graspingly ambitious, the intellectually dishonest, or others whose views conflict with our own.
- And I know what it feels like to want quietly and graspingly for unknown things.
- Pidgin is spoken slowly and graspingly, has no formal set of rules or consistent structure, and relies heavily on the speakers' native languages.
graspingness
- He has persuaded John that every socially prescribed role entraps one in falsity, the clamour of petty needs, and graspingness.
- Envy is a graspingness for self. Greed is a graspingness for life.
- They trade on their rudeness, graspingness and lack of consideration and everybody knows about this before they book.