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compulsive

adjectivenounattested in dialogue

  • //kəmˈpʌlsɪv//

Uncontrolled or reactive and irresistible.

adjective

  1. 1

    Uncontrolled or reactive and irresistible.

    Jenny is a compulsive liar—don't believe a thing she says.

    Under this Act, the term "disability" shall not include—...(2) compulsive gambling, kleptomania, or pyromania; or[…]

    Call it impulsive, call it compulsive, call it insane / But when I'm surrounded I just can't stop

  2. 2

    Having power to compel; exercising or applying compulsion.

    Religion is […] inconsistent with all compulsive Motives.

Etymology

Borrowed from French compulsif, formed from Latin compulsus, past participle of compellere (“to compel”), from com- (“together”) + pellere (“to drive”).

noun

  1. 1

    One who exhibits compulsive behaviours.

Forms

plural
compulsives
comparative
more compulsive
superlative
most compulsive
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).