Greedy means always wanting more than your share — of money, food or anything else. A greedy child, greedy for power, do not be greedy.
About food it is mild and often affectionate; about money it is a serious accusation. Greedy for is the construction with an abstract object. Note greed, the noun; the phrase greed is good, from the film Wall Street, quoted almost always with irony; and that in computing a greedy algorithm is a technical term for one that takes the best immediate option without looking ahead.
1adjectivegreedyAlways wanting more than your share.
“He was greedy in a way that eventually cost him everything.”
synonyms: grasping, avaricious
greedy is a quality of wanting too much.
Old English graedig meant hungry as well as greedy — the two were one idea. The narrowing to wanting more than you need is an English development, and hunger took over the plain meaning.
Proto-Germanic
*grēdagaz — hungry
ang-ang
grēdiġ — greedy, hungry, eager
Middle English
gredy
English, today
greedy
Built from
From Middle English gredy, from ang-ang grēdiġ (“greedy, hungry, eager”) (cognate West Saxon form grǣdiġ), from Proto-Germanic grēdagaz (“hungry”), from Proto-Germanic grēdaz, grēduz, grēdô (“hunger”), from Proto-Indo-European gʰer-. Equivalent to greed + -y. Cognate with Old Saxon grādag (“greedy”), Dutch graag (“gladly, willingly”), Old High German grātag (“greedy”), Danish grådig (“greedy”), Norwegian Bokmål grådig (“greedy”) (from Old Norse gráðigr (“greedy”), gráði (“greed, hunger”)), Gothic 𐌲𐍂𐌴𐌳𐌰𐌲𐍃 (“hungry”). गृद्धि is a false cognate.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA