rapacious

But the cynicism that has always thrummed underneath his high-concept comedies — the dehumanizing algorithms, the rapacious finance system — is more prominent in this slim, potent novel.

“It wouldn’t work. The United States has a rapacious appetite for pushing kids. But I can at least make sure a child is given their sweet time in kindergarten,” she said.

Even in the triumph of the worst, which is the age of robber barons and the age of rapacious capitalism and imperialism, even those things were being contested.

For Kyiv, it's the only way to guarantee the country's future survival, against a rapacious Russian enemy bent on subjugating Ukraine.

Or, as John Huston’s rapacious tycoon Noah Cross says in “Chinatown,” “Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of anything.”