obsessive
/əbˈsɛsɪv
/adjective
1Of the nature of an obsession: people dogged by obsessive jealousy...
- This game gives me a compulsion to my already obsessive nature to keep playing and to kill everyone who isn't me.
- It is a relief, he says, to confess to the private consultant that the refuge he once sought in art for his depression and regimented obsessive nature, he now finds in the bottle.
- I am particularly concerned about the obsessive nature of this defendant, and whether he represents a danger to women in general.
Synonyms
all-consuming, consuming, compulsive, dominating, controlling, obsessional, addictive, fanatical, fanatic, neurotic, excessive, besetting, gripping, haunting, tormenting, inescapable
informal pathological
US informal wackadoo, wackadoodle
1.1Affected by an obsession: she became obsessive about her school work...
- Domestic contentment has provided a secure foundation, enabling him to direct his obsessive focus on career success.
noun
A person who is affected by an obsession: he’s an obsessive, obsessed with having complete collections of things...
- Hollywood turns brides-to-be into into petty, vulgar, nitpicking obsessives.
- All booksellers, I begin to think, are crazed obsessives.
- Theirs is a marriage of football convenience made by football obsessives.
Derivatives
obsessiveness
/ noun ...- The good thing about Bollinger is that he hasn't lost that quality - passion, wonder, obsessiveness, whatever it is - that initially motivates the fan or collector.
- What the truth is, is that it shows really the obsessiveness, the addictiveness of this kind of eating, the eating in the car, the bingeing, all of which is true.
- Her two-hour sunrise yoga sessions and macrobiotic diet (though hers appears to include wine and cheese) have been held up as instances of fussy obsessiveness.