An unhealthy and compulsive preoccupation with something or someone

Usage examples of obsession.

That determination had become an obsession now, which he recognized for what it was-the sole reason for his survival and for his recently taken decision firstly to be accepted as a reformed and model prisoner at Port Arthur and secondly to abscond therefrom.

The long obsession had died with Maynard, and he had been dead before he hit the peat, like Cascade and Cotopaxi, Abseil and Col.

Western nations, thereby achieving a foreign policy goal that had become a national obsession.

The cult of Mithra, less widespread then than it has become since our expedition in Parthia, won me over temporarily by the rigors of its stark asceticism, which drew taut the bowstring of the will, and by its obsession with death, blood, and iron, which elevated the routine harshness of our military lives to the level of a symbol of universal struggle.

Not content with her own private obsession she cast her husband in the role of Wolmar, the older, rather austere but devoted figure whom Julie dutifully marries in preference to the besotted young tutor Saint-Preux.

Michael said, feeling none of the hesitance or awkwardness he would have once experienced on naming his occupation, his obsession.

The odd thing about his surprising interest in Miss Charlotte Birling was his obsession with her mouth.

Yet his obsession had burgeoned into something far more profound than desire.

For by now the civilizing mission, which was the ostensible motive of all their heroic adventures, would have become a rigid obsession.

But the cobber was trying, substituting obsession for buoyant enthusiasm.

His choosiness about where he squatted to defecate had grown to the point of compulsive obsession.

Dugger was gone by then, drinking up his settlement money in the honky-tonks of Nashville, giving up fandom for different and more dangerous obsessions.

Many of the soldiers grumbled that Farfalla was right: the general had let Ruusan become his mad obsession and was leading them to their doom.

I have no interest in illithid obsessions, but the Dekanter alhoon most likely believed that if it could recreate the gith, its elder brain would forgive it and it would receive Commencement.

And even worse, there was no lessening of his sexual urge but a heightening, a greater obsession to pillow than before, one that had already driven him to the insanity of two nights ago with Angelique, not that he did not still desire her, he did, more than ever, and knew without a release he would try again and would not fail next time.