Other forms: preoccupied, preoccupying, preoccupies
To preoccupy is to fill somebody's mind so they attend to nothing else. Preoccupied with work, what preoccupies him, preoccupy the whole country.
The participle is the commoner form, and looking preoccupied is what everybody notices before anybody asks. The Latin means to seize beforehand, since the thought has taken the ground before anything else could.
1verbpreoccupyTo fill somebody's mind so they attend to nothing else.
“Worries about money preoccupied her so much that she forgot her own birthday.”
preoccupy is a absorbing.
Latin praeoccupare means to seize beforehand, from prae plus occupare, to seize.
Proto-Indo-European
*keh₂p-
Latin
praeoccupo
Middle French
preoccuper
English, today
preoccupy
From pre + occupy, after Middle French preoccuper, and its source, Latin praeoccupo. a doublet of preoccupate, now obsolete.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA