Word.ws English Dictionary

obsessed

UK/əbˈsɛst/

obsessed is the simple past 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.
    • 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.1997, Philip Roth, American Pastoral
    • 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?1999 June 28, Mark Lawson, The Guardian
  2. Influenced or controlled by evil spirits, but less than possessed in that the spirits do not actually reside in the victim.
    • Believing that an evil spirit is trying to obsess one is a dangerous belief, and when one comes to believe he is obsessed by an evil spirit, though there is not an evil spirit within a thousand miles of him, he will have all the symptoms.1915, E. W. Sprague, Spirit Obsession Or a False Doctrine & A Menace to Modern Spiritualism, →ISBN, page 86
    • It is true, that by the workings of the law of attraction, and the susceptibility of mortals to the influence of spirit powers, mortals may become obsessed by the spirits of evil...2007, James E. Padgett, The Teachings of Jesus, →ISBN, page 100

Meaning of obsess

Verb

obsess (third-person singular simple present obsesses, present participle obsessing, simple past and past participle obsessed)

  1. (passive voice, constructed with "with") To be preoccupied with a single topic or emotion.
    • Some people are obsessed with sports.
  2. (transitive) To dominate the thoughts of someone.
    • Thoughts of her obsess my every waking moment.
  3. (colloquial, intransitive) To think or talk obsessively about.
    • Stop obsessing over it, will you!

Forms of obsessed

comparativemore obsessed
superlativemost obsessed

Words formed from obsessed

Words that rhyme with obsessed

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about obsessed

What does obsessed mean?
Obsessed means intensely preoccupied with or by a given topic or emotion; driven by a specified obsession.
What is obsessed the simple past and past participle of?
Obsessed is the simple past and past participle of obsess.
What part of speech is obsessed?
Obsessed is an adjective.
How do you pronounce obsessed?
Obsessed is pronounced /əbˈsɛst/ (UK).

Words near obsessed in the dictionary

  1. observingly
  2. observings
  3. obsesh
  4. obseshes
  5. obsess
  6. obsessed
  7. obsessedly
  8. obsessedness
  9. obsessee
  10. obsessees
  11. obsesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: obsessed (page history and authors); obsess (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-AnotherFriendlyHuman-obsessed.wav.

Cite this entry: “obsessed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/obsessed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.