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compulsive
[ kuhm-puhl-siv ]
adjective
- compelling; compulsory.
- Psychology.
- pertaining to, characterized by, or involving compulsion:
a compulsive desire to cry.
- governed by an obsessive need to conform, be scrupulous, etc., coupled with an inability to express positive emotions.
noun
- Psychology. a person whose behavior is governed by a compulsion.
compulsive
/ kəmˈpʌlsɪv /
adjective
- relating to or involving compulsion
noun
- psychiatry an individual who is subject to a psychological compulsion
Derived Forms
- comˈpulsiveness, noun
- comˈpulsively, adverb
Other Words From
- com·pulsive·ly adverb
- com·pulsive·ness com·pul·siv·i·ty [k, uh, m-puhl-, siv, -i-tee, kom-puhl-], noun
- noncom·pulsive adjective
- noncom·pulsive·ly adverb
- quasi-com·pulsive adjective
- quasi-com·pulsive·ly adverb
- uncom·pulsive adjective
- uncom·pulsive·ly adverb
Word History and Origins
Origin of compulsive1
Example Sentences
The Martin House’s 12 ft by 15 ft bursar’s office, as it was called, was designed to accommodate the owner’s compulsive work habits.
Determined, stubborn, and tireless, she was motivated by what she described as an “almost compulsive desire to be busy and useful.”
This medication raised their levels of dopamine, which helped with the motor problems, but it also turned them into compulsive gamblers.
There were all these people with Parkinson’s disease who started becoming compulsive gamblers.
Other research and reporting suggest the pandemic has exacerbated symptoms for people with disordered eating, substance use disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and other diagnoses.
But it looks like it was created by crazed person with obsessive-compulsive behavior.
His detail seeking in our meetings is compulsive and a little nuts.
Sex and passion; compulsive, life-changing, soul-altering sex, all to be made more explicit than he had done in the past.
Compulsive writing, or hypergraphia, is a well-known, if uncommon, symptom of temporal lobe epilepsy.
“Obsessive-compulsive tendencies really help to enhance abilities,” Okun said.
Nowhere in the world, I am sure, does the "to be continued in our next" interest take hold on one with such a compulsive grip.
In the hopes of averting so abhorrent, but compulsive an alternative.
He still takes us by the throat, but his grip is not compulsive.
Political and legal differences can be settled either by amicable or by compulsive means.
War is very often enumerated among the compulsive means of settling international differences.
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