voracious vəˈreɪʃəs adjective
1. devouring or craving something such as food in great quantities
2. excessively greedy and grasping
The word voracious has appeared in 103 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Sept. 29 in “Octopuses Invade the English Coast, ‘Eating Anything in Their Path’,” by Stephen Castle. The article quotes Barry Young, who has witnessed “this puzzling phenomenon”:
The sting in the tale, however, is that Mediterranean octopuses, as well as being highly intelligent, are voracious predators. (The plural is not octopi, but octopuses or even octopodes, according to most dictionaries, as the word comes from the Greek, not Latin.) “They were using the crab pots as a dining room, as a restaurant,” Mr. Young said. “The octopus were eating crabs and lobsters. They are ferocious animals. You can just imagine the devastation they were causing as they were going through, eating anything in their path.”
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