Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Preoccupied   /priˈɑkjəpˌaɪd/   Listen
Preoccupied

adjective
1.
Deeply absorbed in thought.  Synonyms: bemused, deep in thought, lost.  "Lost in thought" , "A preoccupied frown"
2.
Having or showing excessive or compulsive concern with something.  Synonyms: haunted, obsessed, taken up.  "Was absolutely obsessed with the girl" , "Got no help from his wife who was preoccupied with the children" , "He was taken up in worry for the old woman"


Preoccupy

verb
(past & past part. preoccupied; pres. part. preoccupying)
1.
Engage or engross the interest or attention of beforehand or occupy urgently or obsessively.  "The matter preoccupies her completely--she cannot think of anything else"
2.
Occupy or take possession of beforehand or before another or appropriate for use in advance.





WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar




"Preoccupied" Quotes from Famous Books



... crowded room and notice that some of its occupants are not adding their voices to the chatter. We resolve to study these unspeaking persons. Some of them merely have nothing to say, or are timid or preoccupied; or it may be they deliberately have set themselves not to talk. These are silent. Some plainly desire not to talk, it may be in general or it may be upon some particular topic; they may (but need not) regard themselves as superior to their associates, or for some other ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... common meal I have, not unfrequently, felt fain to reverse the simile. From their separate stations, at the appointed hour, the guests like ghosts flit to a gloomy gas-lit chamber. They are of various speech and race, preoccupied with divers interests and cares. Necessity and the waiter drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet—hadou mageiros—cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... be a narrow conception if we were to consider as scientific the partisans of the theory alone; more than anywhere else discussion is fruitful in the natural sciences; and if it is necessary to be constantly preoccupied with the general ideas of the day, it is not at all necessary to adhere to them servilely. The naturalists of to-day are in possession of a formula with which we must always preoccupy ourselves; in other words, there ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... so preoccupied since his return to the city that he hadn't noticed the complete lack of any kind of psi sensation. The constant wash of animal reactions was missing, as was the vague tactile awareness of his PK. With sudden realization ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... very annoying...." Raskolnikov muttered in reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Dounia gazed at ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky


More quotes...


Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com