ravening

Voracious and greedy.

There is no shortage of ravening friends and relatives on the day one hits the lottery.

1555, Richard Eden (translator), The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India by Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, London: Edward Sutton, Decade 3, Book 5, p. 116, They eate mans fleshe but seldome, bycause they meete not oftentymes with strangiers, except they goo foorth of theyr owne dominions with a mayne army of purpose to hunt for men, when theyr rauenynge appetite pricketh them forwarde.

Subject to the voracity of a predator.

To be the strongers rauening pray the weaker did begin, And might went for oppressed right […]

Away with him into the open fields, To be a rauening pray to Crowes and Kites:

Predation (by an animal); voracious eating or consumption.

Some rather deuoure than eate their meate non other wyse than suche as be ledde in to prison. This rauenyng and deuourynge is appropred to theues.

Consider whether the lusty person were in foretyme geuen to moche drynkyng, eatyng and rauenyng, tomoch ease, to no exercise or bathinges in his helth, or no.

Eagerness for plunder; rapacity; extortion.

We must kyll diuelish pryde, furious angre, insatiable couetousnes, filthy lucre, stinking lechery, deadly hatred & malice, foxy wilines, woluish rauening & deuouring, and al other vnreasonable lustes and desires of the fleshe.

And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.