Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To preoccupy the mind of excessively.
- v. To have the mind excessively preoccupied with a single emotion or topic: "She's dead. And you're still obsessing” ( Scott Turow).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To besiege; beset; compass about.
- To attack, vex, or plague from without, as an evil spirit. See obsession, 2.
Wiktionary
- v. To be preoccupied with a single topic or emotion.
- v. To dominate the thoughts of someone.
- v. To think or talk obsessively about.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To besiege; to beset.
- v. To excessively preoccupy the thoughts or feelings of; to haunt the mind persistently.
- v. To be excessively or persistently preoccupied with something; -- usually used with on or over.
WordNet 3.0
- v. haunt like a ghost; pursue.
- v. be preoccupied with something
Etymologies
- Latin obsidēre, obsess-, to beset, occupy : ob-, on; see ob- + sedēre, to sit; see sed- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Ah, hell, I obsess from the moment something is completed.”
“The word obsess showed up in English straight out of Classical Latin back in 1440.”
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“So, can you now get another issue to "obsess" about?”
“Speaking of what people think, this morning Obama is saying that people "obsess" too much on what he says.”
Reporter To Wolfson: What Does Hillary Think Of Bill's Pardons Of Weather Underground Members?
“Which means if you think a marginalised person is too obsessed or too emotional or angry or taking it all too personally and it bothers you then work towards a world that doesn't FORCE them to 'obsess' or that doesn't hurt or anger them.”
“Besorge, I do not "obsess", it is you that is obsession of dialectics, words,etc...”
“I'm off to "obsess" about race and gender at a conference about honoring the "obsession" with race and gender.”
“And if you think Mr. Lott has been silent for the last four years, Tim Grieve has a collection of some of the Gentleman from Mississippi's bon mots: Lott on Iraq: After declaring that Senate Republicans and "real people out there in the world" don't "obsess" about Iraq like reporters do, Lott said in September that he doesn't understand why Sunnis and Shiites are fighting each other anyway.”
“Maybe in this age where we all kind of obsess on celebrities, maybe we're all "People" magazine or "US Weekly".”
“KRISTOF: Yes, I mean I really wanted to try to engage young people, students, in the kinds of issues -- be they global poverty or AIDS or maternal mortality or Darfur itself -- that kind of obsess me.”
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