cupidity
pronunciation
How to pronounce cupidity in British English:
UK [kju:ˈpɪdəti]
How to pronounce cupidity in American English:
US [kjuˈpɪdɪti]
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- Noun:
- extreme greed for material wealth
Word Origin
- cupidity
- cupidity: [15] The Latin verb cupere meant ‘desire’ (related forms such as Sanskrit kup- ‘become agitated’, Church Slavonic kypeti ‘boil’, and Latvian kūpēt ‘boil, steam’ suggest that its underlying notion is ‘agitation’). One of its derivatives was the noun cupīdō ‘desire’, which was used as the name of the Roman god of love – hence English cupid [14]. Another was the adjective cupidus ‘desirous’, which produced the further noun cupiditās, source, perhaps via French, of English cupidity, and also ultimately of English covet. Concupiscence [14] also comes from Latin cupere.=> concupiscence, covet
- cupidity (n.)
- mid-15c., from Anglo-French cupidite, Middle French cupidité, from Latin cupiditatem (nominative cupiditas) "passionate desire, lust; ambition," from cupidus "eager, passionate," from cupere "to desire" (perhaps cognate with Sanskrit kupyati "bubbles up, becomes agitated," Old Church Slavonic kypeti "to boil," Lithuanian kupeti "to boil over"). Despite the primarily erotic sense of the Latin word, in English cupidity originally, and still especially, means "desire for wealth."
Example
- 1. The contrast then is between cupidity and stupidity .
- 2. And I could not imagine a human being so blinded by cupidity as to sell poison to such an atrocious creature .
- 3. Those who emphasise cupidity point to the incentives for the financial sector to take undue risk .
- 4. Whether the fault lay more in cupidity than stupidity , or the other way round , an obvious conclusion is that the failure was one of regulation .
- 5. It 's not even the cupidity and stupidity of many of our elected representatives -- although , god knows , as I showed in this column , that sure didn 't help .