Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To invest emotional energy in (a person, object or idea).
Wiktionary
- v. To focus one's emotional energies on something.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. to inject with libidinal energy.
WordNet 3.0
- v. inject with libidinal energy
Etymologies
- Back-formation from cathexis and cathectic. (Wiktionary)
- Back-formation from cathexis. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Peck uses the word cathect divisively, claiming that people can only”
“She refuses to "cathect" to the trial, and I would be derelict in my responsibility if I failed to point out that Microsoft Word 2002 does not recognize the existence of the word "cathect.”
Ellis Weiner: Scribe Sees Boffo Vid as Veep Asst. Trial Preems
“Even more conveniently, the left has the right's history of racism, the bloodstain on its nightshirt, onto which we can cathect all our hostilities in one easy swing.”
Nancy Wadsworth: Down with Demonology: The Left Can Do Better
“The wife refuses to cathect to the Libby trial because she says, with cause, that we've already been burned once by Patrick "Fitz!”
Ellis Weiner: Scribe Sees Boffo Vid as Veep Asst. Trial Preems
“Hence the verbs to cathect, decathect, and hypercathect, the last referring to the defensive manoeuvre (see DEFENCE) of investing in one process in order to facilitate REPRESSION of another.”
“But there is not yet a self sufficient for him to cathect to in the way that he had cathected to her.”
Strange Affinities: A Partial Return to Wordsworthian Poetics After Modernism
“Tylim, citing Jacobson (1964) and Eisnitz (1969, 1974), noted that because of the danger of the immediacy of forbidden incestuous parental objects, the teenager withdraws cathexis from object representations, to cathect the self-representation.”
“Well, standards of proof amongst those who cathect on politics are low in general.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cathect’.
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List of Impressive Dissertation Words
Extraordinary words that Johnston and Shea might try to use while writing their dissertations.
egress, limn, effluvium, asynchronous, imbibe, opine, cognoscente, gnosis, inchoate, cathect, austerity, prescient and 1 more...
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Vocab
goat rodeo, fardel, quotidian, deportment, opprobrium, deracinated, inculcate, desultory, orotund, chivvy, diktat, casuistry and 30 more...
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Baby Got Back-Formations
"A new word created by removing an affix from an already existing word, as vacuum clean from vacuum cleaner, or by removing what is mistakenly thought to be an affix, as pea from the earlier Englis...
resurrect, enthuse, couth, donate, emote, greed, isolate, manipulate, orate, prequel, spectate, upholster and 94 more...
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Infinite Jest
Words taken from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
prorector, monograph, post-fourier, snuffle, rototremble, creatus, enfilade, subanimalistic, balletic, espadrilles, leonine, cirri and 1153 more...
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Alaric's Words
chelation, bradykinetic, twelfth, dank, kulak, oneiric, cathexis, yonder, quern, lissome, naiad, krakatoan and 124 more...
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tez's Words
tain, curlicue, eidolon, exoteric, puissant, ragamuffin, insouciant, yarrow, taciturn, mundane, vomitorium, tenebre and 140 more...
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richardr's Words
marmoreal, osteology, tyromancy, metalepsis, idioglossia, tapinosis, epicaricacy, carromancy, rogation, senex, aulic, gemütlichkeit and 279 more...
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Angharad's Words
filtrum, aglet, cathect, anent, crepuscular, rigmarole, exert, liripipe, pekoe, perfuse, langerhans, vegemite and 41 more...
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hagendas 2009
aptronym, legerdemain, canard, unctuous, pianissimo, paterfamilias, odious, poetaster, mellifluous, fantod, sacristan, debouch and 65 more...
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Ben's Favorite Words
callipygous, zugzwang, architectonic, phatic, craptacular, narthex, omphaloskepsis, jentacular, bungaloid, haberdashery, paraprosdokian, bindlestiff and 6 more...
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Random
cerograph, calculary, hambeast, canescent, animalculum, atavistic, bloomery, wroth, parturition, obstreperous, sibilant, pourparler and 53 more...
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C
concupiscence, Cadmean victory, caprice, caustic, circumambient, circumlocution, claque, colonnade, comprador, concatenate, concours d'élégance, concourse and 61 more...
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ataferner's list
just words
cathect, erudition, lasciviousness, lucite, antediluvian, duplicity, tautology, prestidigitation, sapiosexual, vorpal, vulpine, vexing
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A
abjure, abscond, abhor, acquiescent, abstruce, affect, aficionado, acolyte, abject, allegory, alterity, archimedean and 52 more...
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basurablanca's Words
ascertain, copasetic, antediluvian, kaboom, hellacious, recalcitrant, insouciant, conflagration, cathect, menagerie, precarious, egregious and 131 more...
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Yearning Words
yearn, catachresis, chresard, chrestomathy, hortative, exhort, charism, charisma, chervil, eucharist, lief, leman and 34 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cathect.

super-logos maybe with the help of a flying squirl? Aug 27, 2008
pterodactyl Every time I hear this word, I think of "decathecting", coined by Mike Doughty in this song. Apr 6, 2008
reesetee Back-formation from cathexis. Aug 9, 2007