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Allin

obsessive

adjectivenounattested in dialogue

  • //əbˈsɛs.ɪv//

Prone to cause obsession.

adjective

  1. 1

    Prone to cause obsession.

    The idea is too tempting, it's obsessive.

  2. 2

    Having one thought or pursuing one activity (an obsession) to the absolute or nearly absolute exclusion of all others.

    Hardcore fans' obsessive behavior may take over their lives.

  3. 3

    Excessive, as results from obsession.

    A workaholic's obsessive zeal may lead to success or burnout.

    Yes, there were instances of grandstanding and obsessive behaviour, but many were concealed at the time to help protect an aggressively peddled narrative of [Oscar] Pistorius the paragon, the emblem, the trailblazer.

Etymology

Etymology tree English obsess Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder. Latin -īvus Old French -ifbor. Middle English -yf English -ive English obsessive From obsess + -ive.

noun

  1. 1

    A person who is obsessed, who has an obsession.

Forms

plural
obsessives
comparative
more obsessive
superlative
most obsessive
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).