obsession
/əbˈsɛʃ(ə)n
/noun [mass noun]
1The state of being obsessed with someone or something: she cared for him with a devotion bordering on obsession...
- The Party's high command is now bordering on obsession in its concern over how to avoid a low voter turnout.
- Still, the fascination of the Scottish press with whether she is up the duff borders on obsession.
- The American obsession with therapy may almost be considered as a neurosis in its own right.
1.1 [count noun] An idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind: he was in the grip of an obsession he was powerless to resist...
- Like Cronenberg, she's effectively collapsed body and mind obsessions into one.
- Her own personality and obsessions continually inform her work, and she likes it that way.
- Just occasionally a show comes along that seems to capture the moment, its preoccupations and obsessions.
Synonyms
fixation, ruling/consuming passion, passion, mania, idée fixe, compulsion, preoccupation, enthusiasm, infatuation, addiction, fetish, craze, hobby horse;
phobia, complex, neurosis
informal bee in one's bonnet, hang-up, thing, bug
Derivatives
obsessional
/ adjective ...- Such obsessional regulation, he says, ‘compromises the fabric of that very elusive thing we call trust.’
- It's a good thing golf is so compulsive and golfers so obsessional.
- In the second year, fourteen per cent presented with anxiety symptoms and seven per cent with obsessional compulsive symptoms.
obsessionally
- No wonder we feel about you more strongly, more obsessionally - whether as Francophile or Francophobe - than you feel about us.
- Her occasional wry and critical comments only give added narrative power to the passages which are obsessionally swept up in film, to the point where the identity of the viewer is lost.
- I am obsessionally thinking about moving to Paris just to try to stop myself slipping into the Void of Despair.
obsessionalism
Origin
Early 16th century (in the sense 'siege'): from Latin obsessio(n-), from the verb obsidere (see obsess).