greed
part of speech
noun (greed, uncountable)
meaning for a pupil
1) Greed is wanting much more of something, such as money, food or power, than you need or than is fair. tree →
2) (church) Greed (also called avarice) is one of the seven deadly sins in Christian teaching. tree →
sense in the lessons
In ethics, stories and fables greed often leads to trouble: King Midas wanted everything to turn to gold, and the dog with the bone lost it by being greedy. In everyday life greed means not sharing, taking more than your share. Phrases: «out of greed», «pure greed», «greed for money», «greed is good» (a famous line meant to be shocking).
examples
- The king's greed made him unhappy in the end. tree →
- He ate all the sweets out of greed. tree →
- Greed for gold made the pirates fight each other. tree →
- Sharing is the opposite of greed. tree →
- Christians count greed as one of the seven deadly sins. tree →
- The fable shows how greed can make you lose everything. tree →
- Some people cut down forests out of greed for money. tree →
- The sight of the money roused all the merchant's greed. tree →
note
Uncountable: no plural. Adjective: greedy; adverb: greedily. Related: greedy guts (UK informal, a person who eats too much). Wanting things is normal; greed is wanting too much and not caring about others.
In the corpora
- Greed is wanting more than your share; envy is being sore that someone else has something good.
- Sometimes greed goes unnoticed — nobody counts the pencils — but the person left with the broken ones still notices.
- Greed for more and more things hides what you already have.
- Places that hold rare resources become important, and sometimes the targets of greed.
- Virtues are good habits such as honesty and courage; vices are bad habits such as greed and cruelty.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «greed» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.