monomaniac
/ˌmɒnəʊˈmeɪnɪæk/
monomaniac means focused on one thing above all others. It carries an Arena rating of 1674, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, monomaniac ranks #566 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #2,016 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #2,474 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words, #3,191 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words.
monomaniac is pronounced /ˌmɒnəʊˈmeɪnɪæk/.
Why “monomaniac” is a great word
One afflicted by an all-consuming, pathological fixation on a single idea or subject to the exclusion of all others. Formed within English by compounding the combining form mono- ("single, one") and -maniac ("affected by madness or obsession"), perhaps modelled on a French lexical item; first attested in 1823. Unlike an enthusiast, whose passion is a chosen pleasure, or a polymath, who delights in the breadth of knowledge, a monomaniac is imprisoned by an involuntary and narrowing obsession. It is the collector whose shelves groan with a thousand identical thimbles, the theorist who sees the world's history in the migrations of a single beetle, the lover who worships the idea of a person alone. The monomaniac has traded the world for a keyhole, and calls the view complete.
adj
- Focused on one thing above all others.
noun
- A person who is obsessed with a single thing, to the exclusion of other concerns.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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