cupidity /kyoo-PID-ə-tee/. noun. Despite the sensual connotation of its Latin roots, cupidity now refers to non-erotic greed, covetousness, lust, or inordinate appetite for material things. From Latin cupidus (ardent desire); from cupere(desire); maybe from Proto-Indo-European root kup-(e)i- (to tremble; to desire). File under: words that might not mean what you think they mean. See also: avarice, rapaciousness and venality.
“Tantalizing aromas: food frying in vats or simmering in huge kettles or roasting on sticks over fires. Sarah pulling me from one culinary spectacle to another in an agony of cupidity.” (Deborah Eisenberg)
“Cassandra in some crafty excitement this woman alone she elected as worthy to share with her—ever more agitated, insisting; Mop, ever so evasively placating—the girl almost hilariously angry; each, although obviously at odds, fully enjoying a tussle in cupidity.” (Mina Loy)
“Inevitably, the unknown became the focus for legends; frustrated cupidity acted as a spur to imagination…” (Evelyn Waugh)
“The passage is short because it seems unnecessary to dwell on these condemned souls, and Dante treats them with utter scorn. They are like beasts deprived of reason, prisoners of their cupidity. They resemble the animals depicted on their money bags—a gorged goose, a greedy sow—in their gestures, like a Pisan, seen here by Dante, whose final grimace is to lick his snout like an ox.” (Alberto Manguel)
“…this woman had a child, that was unable to walk or talk, at the age of five years, neither could it cry like other children, but made a constant, piteous, moaning sound. This exhibition of helplessness and imbecility, instead of exciting the master’s pity, stung his cupidity, and so enraged him, that he would kick the poor thing about like a foot-ball.” (Sojourner Truth)
“The memory of that one-thousand-mark note, of that grey-blue vision which had whisked under his very nose and then vanished, gnawed at his entrails; his cupidity was stung to the quick, he licked his parched lips, he could not forgive himself for having let me go and thus been cheated of that adorable rustle, which made the tips of his fingers itch.” (Vladimir Nabokov)
“He could not reconcile himself to wanton killing. After some inspection of the wash drawn from fissures in the rocks with his hands, the cupidity of the miner awakened within him.” (Edward Dyson)
“A text is words, words, more words. But some books want to be otherwise than cup to coffee at the diner’s anonymous counter. That’s what I’ve so far said. They want to be persons, companions, old friends. And part of their personality naturally comes from use. The collector’s copy, slipcased and virginal, touched with gloves, may be an object of cupidity but not of love.” (William H. Gass)
“This race is said to carry on a perpetual warfare with the Griffons, a kind of monster, with wings as they are commonly represented, for the gold which they dig out of the mines, and which these wild beasts retain and keep watch over with a singular degree of cupidity, while the Arimaspi are equally desirous to get possession of it.” (Jorge Luis Borges)