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Thursday 12 April 2012

Entry: rapacious (adj.)


In context: "A good muddy juice fills Joelle's mouth with spit that's as good as the juice, and her linen veil is drying and beginning once again comfortingly to flutter with her breath, and, perched alone and glanced at covertly by people who don't know they know her voice, she feels the desire to raise the veil before a mirror, to refine some of her purse's untouched Material, raise the veil and set free the encaged rapacious thing inside to breathe only uncloth'd gas it can stomach; she feels ghastly and sad; she looks like death, her mascara's all over the place; no one can tell."

Definition: Inordinately given to grasping or taking; aggressively greedy; greedily desirous of.


Other:I'm sort of a sucker for historical imprecations and insults, so I enjoyed this:


1572   tr. S. Münster Briefe Coll. & Compend. Extract Cosmogr. f. 61v,   Hee being a craftye felow, rapaciouse, dishonest, subiect to all vyce, a notable dissembler, & deceiuer, was at the length made the ruler of their marchaundize and wares.

SNOOT score: 1

Page:229
 
Source: Oxford English Dictionary

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