Greed

How to spell greed

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce greed

What does greed mean?

1. nounAn intense and selfish desire for more wealth, food, or possessions than one needs.

Greed in a sentence

• Unchecked corporate greed led to the financial collapse.

• His greed for power destroyed every friendship he had.

Where does greed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Greed is a relatively young word in English, formed in the early 1600s as a back-formation from the much older adjective 'greedy'. That adjective came from the Old English 'grædig', meaning 'hungry, ravenous, or eager', which in turn rests on a Germanic root tied to a sense of physical hunger and craving. For centuries English speakers had the adjective greedy but no matching noun, so writers eventually trimmed it down to 'greed' to name the quality itself. The same ancient root surfaces in related Germanic languages, all circling the idea of an appetite that cannot be satisfied. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, its spelling rarely causes trouble; the only mild trap is remembering the double 'e' rather than writing it as 'greid'.

How the word is built

• greed (a back-formation from greedy, from Old English grædig 'hungry, voracious')