obsessed
verb
Form of obsess , past tense of obsess.
Simple meaning
To dominate the thoughts of someone.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhbsehstSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
əbˈsɛst
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
past tense of obsess
To dominate the thoughts of someone.
past tense of obsesspassive voiceconstructed with "with"
To be preoccupied with a single topic or emotion.
past tense of obsessintransitivecolloquialconstrued with over
To think or talk obsessively about.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To dominate the thoughts of someone.
In this sense, obsessed is a strong, expressive word and suggests enthusiasm that has gone past what most people would call reasonable. Among friends, and about hobbies, it can be worn proudly; about someone's politics or beliefs it usually sounds like criticism.
- Emotional tone
- Context-dependent
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Critical or judgemental
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.