adjective
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psychiatry motivated by a persistent overriding idea or impulse, often associated with anxiety and mental illness
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continually preoccupied with a particular activity, person, or thing
noun
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psychiatry a person subject to obsession
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a person who is continually preoccupied with a particular activity, person, or thing
Other Word Forms
- nonobsessive adjective
- nonobsessively adverb
- nonobsessiveness noun
- obsessively adverb
- obsessiveness noun
Etymology
Origin of obsessive
First recorded in 1910–15; obsess(ion) + -ive
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
No other Victorian poet could have brought off such a fitful and obsessive work; no one else could have sustained such music and emotion for more than 100 pages.
The third floor surprises us with the architect’s obsessive studies of the Alps.
“I’m as obsessive about Emily Brontë as everyone else. She gets inside you.”
From Los Angeles Times
Why do you think obsessive love still resonates with readers?
From Los Angeles Times
It started with the concept album “A Curious Feeling,” its obsessive autumnal gloom and ornate melodies made even more memorable by the monochrome opacity of the production.
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
