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obsess

verb
USuhb-SES/əbˈsɛs/

Formsobsesses, obsessing, obsessed

3 meanings of obsess

Practice

  1. 1
    verbtransitive or intransitive
    To be completely preoccupied with a single topic or emotion, returning to it again and again.

    Many new parents obsess about every small sound their baby makes.

    He had become obsessed with finding the perfect answer.

    Similarfixate, fret, agonize

    Note

    This sense lives mostly in the passive. The preoccupied person is the subject, and with introduces the fixation: some people are obsessed with sports, and The Economist's "Magician's brain" (2014) shows a Newton obsessed with alchemy. The active verb appears too, sometimes with on, as when Nigel Harris in RAIL (2023) accuses a ministry of obsessing on cost. For the chattier pattern, see the colloquial "obsess over".

  2. 2
    verbcolloquialintransitive
    To think or talk about something again and again, far more than seems reasonable.

    Sports fans obsess over trade rumors all summer long.

    She has been obsessing about the interview since Monday.

    Similarfret, agonize, fixate

  3. 3
    verbtransitive
    To take over and dominate the thoughts of a person, leaving room for little else.

    Revenge obsessed the old sailor until his final days.

    A single failure can obsess an ambitious mind for years.

    Similarconsume, haunt, preoccupy, possess

    Note

    Here the idea is the subject and the person is the object: thoughts of her obsess my every waking moment. It is the active form behind the passive "obsessed with." The Latin root obsideō meant "sit before" or "besiege," and this sense keeps that picture of a thought camped around a mind. Possess and assess come from the same sedeō, "I sit."

Practice

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Origin

From Latin obsessus, the perfect passive participle of obsideō ("to sit on or in, remain, besiege"), which comes from ob ("before") plus sedeō ("I sit"); it is related to words like session, assess, and possess.