avidity

From Old French avidite (French avidité), from Latin aviditās (“avidity, covetousness”).

avidity (usually uncountable, plural avidities)

1. Greediness; strong appetite.
2. Eagerness; intenseness of desire.

   to eat with avidity

   • 1881, W. S. Gilbert, Patience:

     Come, walk up, and purchase with avidity, / Overcome your diffidence and natural timidity.

   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384:

     Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.

3. (biochemistry) The measure of the synergism of the strength of individual interactions between proteins.

• (intenseness of desire): eagerness, alacrity, enthusiasm, liveliness