as in obsessions
something about which one is constantly thinking or concerned
the future entomologist's preoccupation with insects from a very early age
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Recent Examples of preoccupations
His camera’s graceful gyrations render all the more explicit the inextricable bond of dramas and their landscapes, embodying the film’s ideal of a physical and aesthetic connection with nature—its preoccupations with the spiritual dimensions of landscape and climate, color and texture.
—
Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 5 Feb. 2025
Sanger vividly conveys the immediacy of decision-making, showing how short-term preoccupations shape the long term.
—Foreign Affairs, 25 Feb. 2025
Projecting stability and control has long been one of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s biggest preoccupations, its implicit justification for limiting citizens’ civil liberties.
—Vivian Wang, New York Times, 16 Jan. 2025
There was the totality of the show’s visual conceit fully united with its thematic preoccupations, an interior corporate world that looks otherworldly and bizarre yet more tangible and alive than life in the cold, dark outside.
—Kathryn Vanarendonk, Vulture, 7 Jan. 2025
The lazy tendency of many historical films is to put people with modern frameworks and preoccupations into period garb, telling stories that make sense to contemporary audiences.
—Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times, 27 Dec. 2024
But there’s nothing conscious on my part about ongoing preoccupations or consistencies or running themes or any of that.
—Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 21 Jan. 2025
Schrader doubles down on his thematic and stylistic preoccupations — Bressonian visual gestures, Dostoyevskian spiritual journeys, and a pointed social conscience, to name a few — but The Card Counter never feels like a retread of past ideas.
—Vikram Murthi, Vulture, 21 Jan. 2025
But more often death erupted through the surface of the fiction’s other preoccupations, injecting a jarring but welcome note of harsh reality in what was otherwise a dark fantasy.
—Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 16 Jan. 2025
Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 5 Feb. 2025
Sanger vividly conveys the immediacy of decision-making, showing how short-term preoccupations shape the long term.
—Foreign Affairs, 25 Feb. 2025
Projecting stability and control has long been one of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s biggest preoccupations, its implicit justification for limiting citizens’ civil liberties.
—Vivian Wang, New York Times, 16 Jan. 2025
There was the totality of the show’s visual conceit fully united with its thematic preoccupations, an interior corporate world that looks otherworldly and bizarre yet more tangible and alive than life in the cold, dark outside.
—Kathryn Vanarendonk, Vulture, 7 Jan. 2025
The lazy tendency of many historical films is to put people with modern frameworks and preoccupations into period garb, telling stories that make sense to contemporary audiences.
—Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times, 27 Dec. 2024
But there’s nothing conscious on my part about ongoing preoccupations or consistencies or running themes or any of that.
—Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 21 Jan. 2025
Schrader doubles down on his thematic and stylistic preoccupations — Bressonian visual gestures, Dostoyevskian spiritual journeys, and a pointed social conscience, to name a few — but The Card Counter never feels like a retread of past ideas.
—Vikram Murthi, Vulture, 21 Jan. 2025
But more often death erupted through the surface of the fiction’s other preoccupations, injecting a jarring but welcome note of harsh reality in what was otherwise a dark fantasy.
—Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 16 Jan. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Preoccupations.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/preoccupations. Accessed 23 Apr. 2025.
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