Avarice
Webster's Dictionary [1]
(1): (n.) An excessive or inordinate desire of gain; greediness after wealth; covetousness; cupidity.
(2): (n.) An inordinate desire for some supposed good.
Charles Buck Theological Dictionary [2]
Is an immoderate love to and desire after riches, attended with extreme diffidence of future events, making a person rob himself of the necessary comforts of life, for fear of diminishing his riches.
See Covetousness and Miser
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament [3]
Avarice —See Covetousness.
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [4]
(from Lat. avarus, from aveo, crave, strive after), an undue love of money. Avarice consists not merely in seeking after worldly wealth too eagerly, or by unjust means, but in loving it excessively, even though it be our own. Avarice is in its nature sin, and, according to St. Paul, a kind of idolatry. Gregory the Great enumerates seven particular sins which spring from avarice, or, as he calls them, "daughters of avarice," viz. treasons, frauds, lies, perjuries, restlessness, violences, hardness of hearts (Mor. in Jobum, lib. 31, cap. 17). The cause of this vice is really unbelief. It "is because men believe not Providence, therefore do they so greedily scrape and hoard" (Barrow On the Creed, Sermon I). It grows by indulgence, and is strongest in the aged, as if, by a penal irony, they who can least enjoy riches should most desire, them (Wesley, Sermons, serm. 130).
