Obsessed

English

Verb

obsessed

1. Simple past tense and past participle of obsess.

Adjective

Obsessed (comparative more Obsessed, superlative most Obsessed)

1. Intensely preoccupied with or by a given topic or emotion; driven by a specified obsession.
   • 1997, Philip Roth, American Pastoral:

     What was starting to unsettle him, to frighten him, was the idea that Merry was less horrified now than curious, and soon he himself became obsessed, though not, like her, by the self-immolators in Vietnam but by the change of demeanor of his eleven-year-old.

   • 1999, Mark Lawson, The Guardian, 28 Jun 1999:

     Strangely, although it is an international cliché that the British are obsessed with the weather, it is a fixation with minor irritations: will rain spoil the wedding, the Test Match, the bank holiday?

   • 2007, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day:

     Everyone lay around in a sort of focused inertia, drinking, handing cigarettes back and forth, forgetting with whom, or whether, they were supposed to be romantically obsessed.

Thesaurus

absorbed, absorbed in, affected, agonized, bedeviled, beset, besotted, bewitched, buried in, caught up in, contemplating, contemplative, devoted, devoted to, devoured by, dogged, dominated, engaged, engrossed, engrossed in, fixated, ghost-haunted, ghost-ridden, gripped, hag-ridden, harassed, haunted, held, hipped, hung-up, imbued with, immersed in, impressed, impressed with, infatuated, intent, intent on, involved, lost in, meditating, meditative, mindful, monomaniac, monomaniacal, monopolized, moved, nagged, obsessed by, occupied, overcome, penetrated with, plagued, possessed, preoccupied, prepossessed, queer, racked, rankled, remembering, seized with, single-minded, specter-haunted, spirit-haunted, spooked, spooky, stricken, studious, studying, submerged in, swept up, taken up with, torn, tortured, totally absorbed, touched, troubled, unable to forget, witch-charmed, witch-held, witch-struck, witched, wracked, wrapped in, wrapped up in

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /əbˈsɛst/

Translations

fixated on a single topic or emotion

Finnish: pakkomielteinen French: obsédé (fr) m. German: besessen (de) Hungarian: megszállott (hu)

Scottish Gaelic: beò-ghlacte (gd) Swedish: besatt (sv) Turkish: saplantılı (tr), takıntılı (tr)