# greedy

/ˈɡɹidi/ (US) · /ɡɹˈiːdi/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/greedy
Updated: 2026-06-20

## Senses

### 1. wanting wealth or power

adjective · CEFR B1

wanting more money, power, or things than you actually need.

For teachers: having or showing an intense and selfish desire for wealth, power, or status.

- The greedy businessman didn't care if his workers were poor as long as he made a profit.
- The novel depicts a greedy landlord who prioritises his quarterly dividends over the basic safety and well-being of his tenants.

### 2. wanting too much food

adjective · CEFR B1

wanting to eat more food than you need or eating very quickly so others get less.

For teachers: having an excessive appetite for food; gluttonous.

- Don't be greedy and eat all the cookies before the guests arrive.
- He felt embarrassed by his greedy behaviour at the buffet, having piled his plate high before the rest of the party had been served.

### 3. computing/algorithms

adjective · CEFR C1 · Technical

describing a way of solving a problem by always picking the best choice right now.

For teachers: relating to an algorithm that makes the locally optimal choice at each stage with the hope of finding a global optimum.

- A greedy algorithm might find a solution quickly, but it isn't always the best one.
- While the greedy approach is computationally efficient for the change-making problem, it fails to produce an optimal result for certain non-standard currency systems.

### 4. matching text

adjective · CEFR C2 · Technical

in computer searches, matching the longest possible piece of text.

For teachers: describing a regular expression quantifier that matches as many characters as possible.

- The search was too greedy and highlighted the whole paragraph instead of just one word.
- By default, the star operator is greedy, meaning it will consume the entire string unless a question mark is added to make it lazy.

## Examples

- Don't be greedy and eat all the cookies.
- The greedy landlord raised the rent twice in one year just to increase his own profits.
- While the company claimed to care about the environment, its greedy pursuit of short-term gains led to several avoidable ecological disasters.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.