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.
"There's way more food to track than there is with exercise, so I can see how that can get extremely obsessive," he added.
From BBC ● Oct. 23, 2026
I’m as nostalgic as the next Gen X radio obsessive who remembers long rides in my 1980s Mazda, searching the AM spectrum for engaging chatter.
From Slate ● Oct. 20, 2026
When it comes to my home, I get obsessive about climate risk.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026
Yet tailoring is also one of fashion’s great luxuries — an intimate, almost obsessive process of shaping cloth around the body.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
They are gracefully wrought, each one worked with the same intricate, almost obsessive detail, from hilt to crossbar to minutely etched blade.
From "An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
