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Definition of "possessed" []

  • Owning or mastering something. Used with of: one who is possessed of great wealth. (adjective)
  • Controlled by or as if by a spirit or other force; obsessed: a teenager by love possessed. (adjective)
  • Calm; collected: one who remained possessed in times of great trial. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "possessed" in a sentence
  • "We don't like to use the word possessed because that means they don't have any power of their own."
  • "One of the requisite job skills for a head waiter in a high class Austrian restaurant is being intimately familiar with the title possessed by every regular customer, and most occasional customers, of said restaurant."
  • ""Parents have used the word 'possessed,' " says Susan Swedo , chief of pediatrics and developmental neuroscience at the National Institute of Mental Health who first made the connection to strep in the mid-1990s."