All 7 Uses
preoccupied
in
Lost Horizon
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- It was the wind, before much time had passed, that became the central preoccupation of them all—the leitmotif, as it were, of the whole mournful night.†
Chpt 2 *
- Hence, in his intercourse with Chang, he was sufficiently unpreoccupied to see in him a mannered old gentleman who might not be entirely trustworthy, but who was certainly of high intelligence.†
Chpt 5unpreoccupied = not lost in thought or busystandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unpreoccupied means not and reverses the meaning of preoccupied. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- Suddenly Miss Brinklow came to life out of a mute preoccupation.†
Chpt 5
- In any case she was preoccupied with an idea of her own.†
Chpt 6preoccupied = took up the attention of
- And that being so, he began to behave without care for the imminence with which he had been so long preoccupied; he began to live the kind of life that he had always desired, but had so rarely found possible; for he had kept at heart and throughout all vicissitudes the tranquil tastes of a scholar.†
Chpt 7
- The younger lamas are naturally preoccupied with the past; it is a necessary step to envisaging the future.†
Chpt 9
- Conway did not find these responses entirely reassuring, and Mallinson's future remained a preoccupation.†
Chpt 10
Definitions:
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(1)
(preoccupied) busy thinking about or doing something so that other things are not noticed or done
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Much more rarely, preoccupied can mean that someone has already inhabited or taken something.