fixate
Other forms: fixated; fixating; fixates
If you fixate on something, you become overly focused on it or attached to it. Don't fixate on your grades — try to enjoy the process of learning!
While the original 19th century meaning of fixate was "make stable," it soon came to mean "gaze upon." It was Sigmund Freud who shifted the definition to something more obsessive. His theories of psychoanalysis included the concept of fixation, an unhealthy attachment to something or someone — and fixate followed. You can fixate on small things (like a stain on your sweater) or big things (like world poverty).
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pay attention to exclusively and obsessively
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attach (oneself) to a person or thing in a neurotic way
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become fixed (on)
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make fixed, stable or stationary
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Vocabulary lists containing fixate
In this "remix" of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Zuri Benitez grapples with the effects of gentrification — and with her complicated feelings toward Darius Darcy — when the wealthy Darcy family moves into her Brooklyn neighborhood.
When brothers Genie and Ernie leave the city to spend the summer in Virginia with their grandparents, they learn about what it means to be truly brave.
An inventive seamstress befriends a prince with an eye for unconventional fashion.