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.
The question seemed designed to stump even the person who wrote the episode, not to mention the obsessives competing in the recent “Seinfeld” trivia competition in New York.
In “True Color” Kory Stamper investigates the curious entries tucked into Webster’s Third New International Dictionary—and the brilliant, obsessive scientist who wrote them.
Huerta said they didn’t always agree, but she and Chávez shared a mutual respect and obsessive sense of mission.
From Los Angeles Times
The obsessive search for elephants in your new movie made me wonder if you got nervous about the need to come back with trophy footage.
The lawsuit accuses Jackson of “insinuating himself” into the Cascio family by using “obsessive attention, lavish gifts, access to his celebrity lifestyle, and declarations that he loved and needed each of them.”
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.
