preoccupy

[pree-ok-yuh-pahy]

verb (used with object), -pied, -py·ing.

to absorb or engross to the exclusion of other things.

to occupy beforehand or before others.

Origin:
1560–70; pre- + occupy

Related forms

pre·oc·cu·pi·er, noun

o·ver·pre·oc·cu·py, verb (used with object), -pied, -py·ing.

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Preoccupy is one of our favorite verbs.

So is bowdlerise. Does it mean:

to expurgate (a written work) by removing or modifying passages considered vulgar or objectionable.

to bark; yelp.

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World English Dictionary

preoccupy (priːˈɒkjʊˌpaɪ)

—vb , -pies, -pying, -pied
1.	to engross the thoughts or mind of
2.	to occupy before or in advance of another

[C16: from Latin praeoccupāre to capture in advance, from prae before + occupāre to seize, take possession of]

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Related Words

involve obsess

obsess

Matching Quote

"... until now, it is a mentally isolated, a truely [sic] colonial position, which has been occupied by the women physicians of America. When a century shall have elapsed after general intellectual education has become diffused among women; after two or three generations have had increased opportunities for inheritance of trained intellectual aptitudes; after the work of establishing, in the face of resolute opposition, the right to privileged work in addition to the drudgeries imposed by necessity, shall have ceased to preoccupy the energies of women; after selfish monopolies of privilege and advantage shall have broken down; after the rights and capacities of women as individuals shall have received thorough, serious, and practical social recognition; when all these changes shall have been effected for about a hundred years, it will then be possible to perceive results from the admission of women to the profession of medicine, at least as widespread as those now obviously due to their admission to the profession of teaching."

-Mary Putnam Jacobi