| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
| |
| fixate |
| |
| SYLLABICATION: | fix·ate |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  f k s t |
| VERB: | Inflected forms: fix·at·ed, fix·at·ing, fix·ates
| | TRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To make fixed, stable, or stationary. 2. To focus one's eyes or attention on: fixate a faint object. 3. To command the attention of exclusively or repeatedly; preoccupy obsessively: “TV and newspapers were fixated on high-technology as the solution to almost everything” (Jay Walljasper, Utne Reader Nov/Dec 1989). 4. Psychology a. To attach (oneself) to a person or thing in an immature or neurotic fashion. b. In classical psychoanalysis, to cause (the libido) to be arrested at an early stage of psychosexual development. | | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To focus the eyes or attention. 2. Psychology a. To become attached to a person or thing in an immature or pathological way; form a fixation. b. To be arrested at an early stage of psychosexual development.
| | |
| |
| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
|
|
