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
Etymology
Origin of obsessive
First recorded in 1910–15; obsess(ion) + -ive
Explanation
If you rush to the carwash every time a speck of dust lands on your fender, your friends probably describe you as obsessive about keeping your car clean. In other words, you care way too much about your car's cleanliness. Whenever someone is wild about something to an alarming or unnatural extent, you can say they're obsessive. If you go berserk when your neighbor’s soccer ball lands in your flowerbed, your neighbors might think you’re obsessive about your garden. If there’s a person you think about every moment, night and day, you may be obsessive, or maybe you’re just in love.
Vocabulary lists containing obsessive
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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.
The 34-year-old, from Redditch, Worcestershire, is one of around 750,000 people in the UK who suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD.
From BBC • Apr. 29, 2026
“From across the street, it looks relatively similar to the perfectly green lawns of my neighbors,” said the author of “American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn.”
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 11, 2023
Obsessive interest in movies was best fed by digging up old reviews and Mad magazine satires.
From New York Times • Jul. 15, 2021
Obsessive control is neither healthy nor tolerable and the sooner you deal with the origins of your trust issues the better for all concerned.
From The Guardian • Oct. 20, 2019
Obsessive or not, any parent wants to believe that she is making a big difference in the kind of person her child turns out to be.
From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt
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.
