OBSESS • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Obsess

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verb

obsess v. t.

To besiege; to beset. (archaic)

To excessively preoccupy the thoughts or feelings of; to haunt the mind persistently.

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Etymology of 'Obsess'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Obsess" Quotes from Famous Books

... great wall of silence has been built between Paris and the front, and, second, because the spirit of France is too alive, too resilient, occupied with too many interests, to allow any one thing, even war, to obsess it. The people of France have accepted the war as they accept the rigors of winter. They may not like the sleet and snow of winter, but they are not going to let the winter beat them. In consequence, the shop windows are again dressed in their ...

— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... the most of its votaries among good douce people who have never written to or for a newspaper in their life, who would never talk of 'adverse climatic conditions' when they mean 'bad weather'; who have never trifled with verbs such as 'obsess,' 'recrudesce,' 'envisage,' 'adumbrate,' or with phrases such as 'the psychological moment,' 'the true inwardness,' 'it gives furiously to think.' It dallies with Latinity—'sub silentio,' 'de die in diem,' 'cui bono?' ...

— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

Words linked to "Obsess" : haunt, obsession, preoccupy, worry, ghost