as in obsession
something about which one is constantly thinking or concerned
had this bizarre idée fixe that people were spying on her with electromagnetic waves
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Recent Examples of idée fixe
This is perhaps why their partnership remains an idee fixe so many decades later.
—
Washington Post, 19 Mar. 2021
Washington Post, 19 Mar. 2021
Recent Examples of Synonyms for idée fixe
Noun
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So long as Sean McVay’s football obsession doesn’t burn him out, the Rams can outsmart most NFL teams.—
Tom Krasovic,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
31 May 2025
-
Every weakness is a strength The NHL’s recent obsession with state tax rates is shortsighted.—
Murat Ates,
New York Times,
31 May 2025
Noun
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Along the way, the orchid became the subject of scientific speculation (including by Charles Darwin), a fetish in the Victorian era’s burgeoning consumer culture, and an example of the excesses of imperialist extraction.—
The New Yorker,
New Yorker,
19 May 2025
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That reputation foreshadows the series’ fetish for both-sidesism and centrist consensus, at one point explicitly equating the right’s embrace of blatant untruths with the left’s enthusiasm for pronouns.—
Alison Herman,
Variety,
20 Feb. 2025
Noun
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Silicon Valley’s visionaries are, in this view, not all cold rationalists; many of them are dreamers and believers whose fixations constitute, in Becker’s view, a spiritual narrative as much as a scientific one—a new theology of technology.—
John Kaag,
The Atlantic,
28 May 2025
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Reductions in pupil responsiveness to light, accuracy and speed of rapid fixation eye movements, and the ability to verbally read aloud a series of numbers appear to be reasonably reliable markers for Alzheimer’s disease, Singman notes.—
Elizabeth Yuko,
Flow Space,
27 May 2025
Cite this Entry
“Idée fixe.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/id%C3%A9e%20fixe. Accessed 3 Jun. 2025.
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