obsess
Definitions
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WordNet 3.6
- v obsess haunt like a ghost; pursue "Fear of illness haunts her"
- v obsess be preoccupied with something "She is obsessing over her weight"
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Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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Interesting fact: Obsessive nose picking is referred to as rhinotillexomania
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- obsess To besiege; to beset. "Through all the dangers that can siege The life of man."
- obsess To excessively preoccupy the thoughts or feelings of; to haunt the mind persistently.
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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
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Interesting fact: Elvis Presley was obsessed with brushing his teeth
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- obsess To besiege; beset; compass about.
- obsess To attack, vex, or plague from without, as an evil spirit. See obsession, 2.
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Quotations
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“Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an after-life.” -
“He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.” -
“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.” -
“To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.” -
“You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.”
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“The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or ever murderous obsession.”
Etymology
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
L. obsessus, p. p. of obsidere, to besiege; ob,see Ob-) + sedere, to sit
Usage
In literature:
His hatred of that subject approached an obsession.
"The Soul of a Child" by Edwin Bjorkman
The obsession of "the governing class" has thrust the people into the background.
"Old and New Masters" by Robert Lynd
George had met before the man obsessed by one idea, with his crude reasoning, his impatience, and his flashing eye.
"The Roll-Call" by Arnold Bennett
The scenery is oppressive, but sane, and the obsession is for the most part expressed in the acting and plot.
"The Art Of The Moving Picture" by Vachel Lindsay
To exasperate him further, the rest of the day seemed obsessed by Victor Mahr.
"Out of the Ashes" by Ethel Watts Mumford
With custom, the localized physical excitement has practically disappeared, and I am no longer obsessed by imagined embraces.
"Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6)" by Havelock Ellis
This endured for a year before it began to waver; and the wavering was soon followed by headlong obsession which fed on itself.
"The Last Shot" by Frederick Palmer
The South was labouring under an obsession and prophesied results accordingly.
"Great Britain and the American Civil War" by Ephraim Douglass Adams
He seems obsessed with some thought all the time.
"The Mysterious Rider" by Zane Grey
Max stood watching it, obsessed by a strange sensation.
"Max" by Katherine Cecil Thurston
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In poetry:
Driven by obsessions,
dragged to the ground –
brought into the light:
freed! unbound!
dragged to the ground –
brought into the light:
freed! unbound!
"Untitled" by Eberhard Arnold
And eyes obsessed with vacant stare,
Looked over heads to empty air,
As though they sought to find therein
Redemption for a maiden sin.
Looked over heads to empty air,
As though they sought to find therein
Redemption for a maiden sin.
"Zalka Peetruza" by Raymond Garfield Dandridge
So this is she for whom my soul once burned
In the tense and heavy fire,
Obsessed, exhausted, driven out of my mind
By tenderness and desire!
In the tense and heavy fire,
Obsessed, exhausted, driven out of my mind
By tenderness and desire!
"Under The Blue Skies..." by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
Yet even in winter a pale paradigm
Of birdsong utters its obsessive theme.
We have set out from here for the sublime;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.
Of birdsong utters its obsessive theme.
We have set out from here for the sublime;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.
"Prospects" by Anthony Hecht
In which we read this nonsense and are moved
At all that was always lost for good, in which
We think about sex obsessively except
During the act, when our minds tend to wander.
At all that was always lost for good, in which
We think about sex obsessively except
During the act, when our minds tend to wander.
"Reading Pornography in Old Age" by Howard Nemerov
So thought I, of all hope bereft,
And by my evil fate obsessed;
A thousand franks was all I'd left
Of that fair fortune I possessed.
…I throw it on the table there,
And wait, with on my lips a prayer.
And by my evil fate obsessed;
A thousand franks was all I'd left
Of that fair fortune I possessed.
…I throw it on the table there,
And wait, with on my lips a prayer.
"Roulette" by Robert W Service
In news:
Is Your Kid Obsessed with Food.
Are your kids obsessed with food.
Everyone from Thom Browne and Michael Kors to non-fashiony regular dudes we know is obsessed with the clothes on Mad Men.
Sir Martin Furnival Jones, who headed the British security apparatus when Western fears of Soviet penetration were at their obsessive cold war zenith, died on March 1.
It's kind of an obsession of mine, like magazines but better.
Mariah Carey sported a new, mucho macho look on the set of her video for her new single Obsessed.
Gregg Gillis, the obsessive brain and tireless body behind the electronic mashup project called Girl Talk, is, perhaps, the hardest-working man in show business.
The Life Obsessive With Wes Anderson.
His long obsession with the History of Vatican II continues.
It dawned on me that I've become a bit too obsessive about water usage at home when we hosted out-of-town guests recently.
WE'RE OBSESSED: HARD CANDY FRAGRANCE.
The art world is currently obsessing over Damien Hirst 's Sotheby's sale in London (September 15 and 16).
I drafted my will four times this week — not because I was obsessed with the macabre, but because I wanted to test how computer-generated wills would fare under human scrutiny.
I was always interested in typefaces, but I became obsessed with them only when my wife got pregnant.
Greenberg says hypnosis isn't about controlling Judy's mind, rather replacing her obsessive, addictive thoughts about food with positive, healthy ones.
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In science:
Uncle Petros & Goldback’s Conjecture. A Novel about Mathematical Obsession, Bloomsbury, New York, 2000.
Incompleteness, Complexity, Randomness and Beyond
Natural scientists have long held a fascination, sometimes bordering on mystical obsession for helical structures in nature.
Position vectors of a spacelike general helices in Minkowski Space $\e_1^3$
Then, in his usual crisp style, he summarized the continuing impact of Einstein’s creative contributions, particularly, his “obsessions with unified field theory”.
Matters of Gravity, the newsletter of the Topical Group in Gravitation of the American Physical Society
Cosmographers are focussed - some might say obsessed - on the mapping of individual local large-scale structures.
Nearby Large-Scale Structures and the Zone of Avoidance: A Conference Summary and Assessment
Curiosity, obsession, and dogged endurance combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.
`Iconoclastic', Categorical Quantum Gravity
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