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compulsive
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show 91 more with this conextual meaning
  • At first, looking out for a ship was something I did all the time, compulsively.†   (source)
  • Aunt Petunia was compulsively straightening cushions.†   (source)
  • Well, he was a compulsive, no news there.†   (source)
  • It's one of those moments when I just love her compulsive punctuality.†   (source)
  • It was involuntary, hopeless, compulsive.†   (source)
  • There are people who collect insurance as compulsively as others collect coins and stamps, and Mark Torrance had been that type.†   (source)
  • As the time I had suggested came and went, I found myself glancing compulsively over my shoulder, breathing a sigh of relief when a figure appeared in the distance.†   (source)
  • It has been decided that you were compulsively promiscuous.†   (source)
  • To Ruth, however, the counting was practical, not compulsive; it had to do with remembering things, not warding off some superstitious nonsense.†   (source)
  • He was compulsive, ate all the time.†   (source)
  • I replied: "Well, I'm a compulsive male and I like to make little toy soldiers move around on my command, and that's fun."†   (source)
  • Driven by compulsive animal fear, I ran for the streets, slipped in among a column of Council workers just leaving the place, and got through the gate that way.†   (source)
  • But the first order of business is for him to compulsively pick up every speck of dirt, debris and tobacco by hand.†   (source)
  • He's compulsive.†   (source)
  • Leto watched the movements of the man's hands: compulsive touchings—the edge of a plate, the handle of a spoon, a finger tracing the fold of a jowl.†   (source)
  • Because of that determined, perhaps compulsive, personality that demanded so much from herself, she infused some of that spirit into me.†   (source)
  • On the way out I open one more door, compulsively.†   (source)
  • His choosiness about where he squatted to defecate had grown to the point of compulsive obsession.†   (source)
  • There's something compulsive about that.†   (source)
  • Usually he's more obsessive/compulsive.†   (source)
  • The compulsively superstitious person is also very often a serious believer in fate; that was the case with Perry.†   (source)
  • Silvan Tomkins, maybe the greatest mind reader of them all, was compulsive about practicing.†   (source)
  • He talked to her in a reassuring, trite and slightly compulsive way, like a first-timer nervous in a singles bar.†   (source)
  • Her mom was a flight attendant and a compulsive shopper, a deadly combination that resulted in Chloe always having the newest stuff from the best places.†   (source)
  • And good old compulsive me, obsessive down to the last detail, refrigerates it in a vial, never knowing what for.†   (source)
  • She turned around and smiled, and Jaime hugged her compulsively, clasping her to his chest and scratching her forehead with his chin, whose impossible beard was already clamoring for a shave.†   (source)
  • In fact, he was finding it almost impossible to do either, so scrambled were his powers of performance by the compulsive need for haste that invariably possessed him.†   (source)
  • Sure, I'm a compulsive talker of a kind, but I'm really more clown than fool.†   (source)
  • My allusions are compulsive attempts at false erudition.†   (source)
  • Though it did not have the violent, compulsive panic which it had carried last time, it was intense; the degree of distress and anxiety was enough to be highly uncomfortable at the receiving end.†   (source)
  • But looks are deceiving: privately she aches, compulsively chain-smoking Newport cigarettes and biting her fingernails to the quick.†   (source)
  • Oh, yes, I became neurotically compulsive about cleanliness.†   (source)
  • In India only the aristocracy gambled; in Ceylon the bankers and lime-burners and fishmongers and the leisured class would spend their afternoons, shoulder to shoulder, betting compulsively.†   (source)
  • When considering his response, Prusias also had the habit of smoothing his beard and compulsively wetting his red lips.†   (source)
  • If I see him at all it is the picture of him silently whittling down fruit-wood dowels into the most refined sets of chopsticks, the used-up squares of finishing sandpaper petaling about his desk amid the other detritus of peanut shells and wood shavings and peels of tangerine, the skins of everything he touches compulsively mined, stripsearched.†   (source)
  • Stink compulsively cleaned and oiled his weapon.†   (source)
  • His wife—Randy did not know her name because Dan never uttered it—apparently had been extravagant, a nympho, a one-drink alcoholic, and a compulsive gambler.†   (source)
  • While we sit there I recall the name of a ludicrous phenomenon I read about in a Duke Univ. course in abnormal psychology: "coprolalia," the compulsive use of obscene language, often found in young women.†   (source)
  • Most of our watchwords were unspoken but we followed them as compulsively as a baby duck takes to water.†   (source)
  • Mother often described herself as a pleaser: she said she couldn't stop herself from speculating what people wanted her to be, and from contorting herself, compulsively, unwillingly, into whatever it was.   (source)
    compulsively = done excessively due to an uncontrollable desire
  • "John was very self-critical, always analyzing himself," Brady recalls. And he'd always been kind of compulsive. He used to carry around a stack of clipboards and notepads. He'd take copious notes, creating a complete record of everything he did during the course of each day. I remember running into him once in downtown Fairbanks. As I walked up, he got out a clipboard, logged in the time he saw me and recorded what our conversation was about, which wasn't much at all.   (source)
    compulsive = having an uncontrollable desire to do too much of something
  • That's it, a compulsive liar.   (source)
    compulsive = done too much because of an uncontrollable desire
  • We had about a gazillion cockroaches, big, strong things with shiny wings. We had just a few at first, but since Mom was not exactly a compulsive cleaner, they multiplied.   (source)
  • Mother began to muscle-test compulsively, unaware she was doing it, whenever she grew tired of a conversation, whenever the ambiguities of her memory, or even just those of normal life, left her unsatisfied.   (source)
    compulsively = done excessively due to an uncontrollable desire
  • As if merely subsisting according to his self-imposed rules weren't strenuous enough, Rosellini also exercised compulsively whenever he wasn't occupied with foraging.   (source)
    compulsively = done a great deal -- as though irresistibly
  • A compulsive liar?   (source)
    compulsive = done because of an uncontrollable desire
  • It seemed that as he drew closer to the Overlook, his need to hurry became more and more compulsive.†   (source)
  • Take, for example, "compulsive promiscuity."†   (source)
  • Leto watched the fat hands, the glittering jewels on baby-fat hands—their compulsive wandering.†   (source)
  • Nathaniel, for all his intractable habits, has nothing on me when it comes to compulsive behavior.†   (source)
  • Compulsively I touched my face, looked down at my hands.†   (source)
  • Deanna's free hand gestured compulsively as she asked the questions.†   (source)
  • In her case this has to do with compulsive neurotic behaviour.†   (source)
  • Amanda had resumed her compulsive smoking; her hands shook and her gaze wandered.†   (source)
  • He wore suits so compulsively custom-fit a fart would split a seam.†   (source)
  • She stole flowers compulsively, even in the owner's presence.†   (source)
  • A compulsively methodical man, he had elaborate systems in place that were supposed to prevent such a catastrophe.†   (source)
  • You were supposed to be so tough, he had thought once, after one of his compulsive lifting exercises.†   (source)
  • After that he felt no compulsive identification with intellectuality and could examine anti-intellectual doctrines with sympathy.†   (source)
  • In the morning, on the way up, I'd made a point of continually Studying the route on this part of the mountain, frequently looking down to pick out landmarks that would be helpful on the descent, compulsively memorizing the terrain: "Remember to turn left at the buttress that looks like a ship's prow.†   (source)
  • When I told Jai I wanted to have a place in the house where we could file everything in alphabetical order, she said I sounded way too compulsive for her tastes.†   (source)
  • I'd taken care to keep blood off the towels; with toilet paper, which I compulsively wadded and flushed every few moments, I mopped up, laboriously, the rusty smears and drips on the tile.†   (source)
  • How many girls do you think a seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to earn the label "compulsively promiscuous"?†   (source)
  • Getting out was almost a compulsive thing; the hotel was circled with the double track of Danny's Flexible Flyer.†   (source)
  • …the last thing that drifted through my mind as I went to sleep, and during the day she came to me obtrusively, obsessively, always with a painful shock: what time was it in London? always adding and subtracting, totting up the time difference, compulsively checking the London weather on my phone, 53 degrees Fahrenheit, 10:12 p.m. and light precipitation, standing on the corner of Greenwich and Seventh Avenue by boarded-up St. Vincent's heading downtown to meet my dealer, and what about…†   (source)
  • At last things began to clear out, but not much; people had started moving toward the coat check and the waiters were starting to remove the cake and the dessert dishes from the buffet when—trapped in conversation with a group of Kitsey's cousins — I glanced across the room for Pippa (as I'd been doing, compulsively, all night long, trying to catch sight of her red head, the only interesting or important thing in the room) — and, much to my surprise, espied her with Boris.†   (source)
  • Danny was turning the purple VW model with the monster sticking out of the sun roof over and over in his hands, compulsively.†   (source)
  • I'm compulsively friendly.†   (source)
  • Though she supposed there was some truth in that, there was also something compulsive about his habits.†   (source)
  • He sighed, recognizing that his compulsive need to review their history was simply an attempt to calm his nerves.†   (source)
  • They used to sit across from him, compulsively touching their rings, as though they were shackles that bound them to their husbands.†   (source)
  • Andrews, a compulsive eater (he had filled a scrapbook with illustrated edibles, everything from strawberry shortcake to roasted pig), said, "Maybe he is crazy.†   (source)
  • Like most sons of domineering men, I had a compulsive need to test the quality of my manhood by marching resolutely into the territory he had carefully marked out as his own.†   (source)
  • She'd flipped through pages of magazines seeing nothing at all, she'd paced back and forth compulsively, trying to stem the dread she felt whenever she thought about her son.†   (source)
  • A shiver raced down Max's spine as he digested the demon's glazed eyes, the compulsive licking of lips.†   (source)
  • If it is compulsive, like it was the first time, whoever reaches her first will have to try to make her unconscious somehow, and the moment the compulsion breaks you must turn back and cover up as best you can.†   (source)
  • They carried an afterglow of sixties incandescence, a readiness to give themselves compulsively to something.†   (source)
  • A police car went by with its siren going, a rotary slurping noise, it sounded like the blender in their kitchen—she made fruit shakes compulsively that they felt morally bound to drink.†   (source)
  • There was only one subject, of course, at least for a while, and we wondered how widespread the blackout might be, and whether it was sabotage, and someone said, a book editor with a bow tie, that this was the title of an early Hitchcock film, with Sylvia Sidney, and he named the rest of the cast compulsively—a film that starts with the lights going out.†   (source)
  • Yet, by placing myself on Yamacraw, I was denying my natural gregariousness and my compulsive need for good friends.†   (source)
  • Dr. Hatfield's ministrations changed all that too, and it was not very long—six weeks or so—before Nathan was purring like a hungry tomcat into its luxuriance, stroking it compulsively and insisting that she should start modeling for shampoo ads.†   (source)
  • The fact is I am a compulsive reader.†   (source)
  • When I first envisioned myself on the island, a noble creature enshrined among the illiterate masses working in the primitive conditions that would have warmed the cockles of Henry Thoreau's heart, I did not consider my compulsive need for friends and good conversation.†   (source)
  • American women, having been conditioned out of their sex instincts, compensate by compulsive interest in rituals over the dead husk of sex …. and each one is sure she knows 'intuitively' the right ritual for conjuring the corpse.†   (source)
  • Wouldn't they?" she asked him, and before he answered I caught myself listening to the dry, compulsive, half-witted sound the crickets were making out in the grass in the dark.†   (source)
  • The Freudians declare that each of us is slaying his father, marrying his mother, all the time—only unconsciously: the roundabout symbolic ways of doing this and the rationalizations of the consequent compulsive activity constitute our individual lives and common civilization.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile, Greg is back to eating beef tips, because when he is stressed out he eats compulsively.   (source)
    compulsively = excessively due to an uncontrollable desire
  • You can never completely kill off that tiny absurd spark of hope that this girl—against all odds, although she could date any guy at school, not to mention guys at college, and even though you look like the Oatmeal Monster and are a compulsive eater and suffer from constant congestion and say so many stupid things per day that it seems like a Stupid Things company is paying you to do it—this girl might like you.   (source)
    compulsive = done too much because of an uncontrollable desire
  • At first I thought you were just kidding around, but now I think you're compulsive or something.†   (source)
  • Like to the Pontic Sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the Hellespont; Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up.†   (source)
  • The contracts between a nation and individuals are only binding on the conscience of the sovereign, and have no pretensions to a compulsive force.†   (source)
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