The Collaborative International Dictionary
Possess \Pos*sess"\ (?; 277), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Possessed; p. pr. & vb. n. Possessing.] [L. possessus, p. p. of possidere to have, possess, from an inseparable prep. (cf. Position) + sedere to sit. See Sit.]
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To occupy in person; to hold or actually have in one's own keeping; to have and to hold.
Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land.
--Jer. xxxii. 15.Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offense returning, to regain Love once possessed.
--Milton. -
To have the legal title to; to have a just right to; to be master of; to own; to have; as, to possess property, an estate, a book.
I am yours, and all that I possess.
--Shak. -
To obtain occupation or possession of; to accomplish; to gain; to seize.
How . . . to possess the purpose they desired.
--Spenser. -
To enter into and influence; to control the will of; to fill; to affect; -- said especially of evil spirits, passions, etc. ``Weakness possesseth me.''
--Shak.Those which were possessed with devils.
--Matt. iv. 24.For ten inspired, ten thousand are possessed.
--Roscommon. -
To put in possession; to make the owner or holder of property, power, knowledge, etc.; to acquaint; to inform; -- followed by of or with before the thing possessed, and now commonly used reflexively.
I have possessed your grace of what I purpose.
--Shak.Record a gift . . . of all he dies possessed Unto his son.
--Shak.We possessed our selves of the kingdom of Naples.
--Addison.To possess our minds with an habitual good intention.
--Addison.Syn: To have; hold; occupy; control; own.
Usage: Possess, Have. Have is the more general word. To possess denotes to have as a property. It usually implies more permanence or definiteness of control or ownership than is involved in having. A man does not possess his wife and children: they are (so to speak) part of himself. For the same reason, we have the faculties of reason, understanding, will, sound judgment, etc.: they are exercises of the mind, not possessions.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of possess English)
Usage examples of "possessing".
Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle.
Eternal Being, The One illimitableness, however, not possessing native existence There but engendered by The One.
The aged caliph was desirous of possessing his dominions, and ending his days in tranquillity and repose: while the Moors and Indians trembled at his name, his palace and city of Damascus was insulted by the Mardaites, or Maronites, of Mount Libanus, the firmest barrier of the empire, till they were disarmed and transplanted by the suspicious policy of the Greeks.
The Persians, long since civilized and corrupted, were very far from possessing the martial independence, and the intrepid hardiness, both of mind and body, which have rendered the northern barbarians masters of the world.
Essential Soul are one and the same, then the Soul will be an Ideal-Form unreceptive of all those activities which it imparts to another Kind but possessing within itself that native Act of its own which Reason manifests.
But suppose two wise men, one of them possessing all that is supposed to be naturally welcome, while the other meets only with the very reverse: do we assert that they have an equal happiness?
Everything has something of the Good, by virtue of possessing a certain degree of unity and a certain degree of Existence and by participation in Ideal-Form: to the extent of the Unity, Being, and Form which are present, there is a sharing in an image, for the Unity and Existence in which there is participation are no more than images of the Ideal-Form.
None the less we will take it that the coherence of extremes is produced by virtue of each possessing all the intermediates.
No: much more than all else, the Soul, possessing the Idea which belongs to a Principle, must have as its native wealth many powers serving to the activities of its Kind.
Now Matter is a thing that is brought under order--like all that shares its nature by participation or by possessing the same principle--therefore, necessarily, Matter is The Undelimited and not merely the recipient of a nonessential quality of Indefiniteness entering as an attribute.
Now in a Reality possessing a determined quality, the Reality and the fact of existence precede the qualified Reality.
In other words this thing, considered in its aspect as possessing the characteristic property of Reality is by that alone recognised as no mere Quality.
And this element--soul is described as possessing consciousness and will and the rest--what can we think?
But this exalts the Sage above the Intellectual Principle as possessing for presiding spirit the Prior to the Intellectual Principle: how then does it come about that he was not, from the very beginning, all that he now is?
Intellective Principle, not previously possessing the Idea of Magnitude or any trace of that Idea or any other.