[f. ACQUISITIVE + -NESS.] The quality of being acquisitive; propensity to make acquisitions, or to make oneself possessor of things; desire of possession. (One of the faculties to which phrenologists have allotted a special ‘organ’ or region of the brain.)
1826. Edin. Rev., XLIV. 271. Because avarice is a vice of pretty common occurrence, it is raised into an original attribute of our nature, by the name of Acquisitiveness.
1827. Hare, Guesses at Truth, I. 143. Civilization takes the heart and sticks it beside the head, just where Spurzheim finds the organ of acquisitiveness.
1862. Stanley, Jewish Ch., I. ii. 31 (1877). The ear-ring or nose-ring … the exact ornaments still so dear to Arab acquisitiveness.
