## Meanings
1. To fill or take up a space or amount of time.
2. To keep someone busy or fill their attention.
3. To live or work in a place.
4. To enter and take control of a place by military force.

## Examples
- The new sofa occupies most of the living room.
- The puzzle occupied the children for the whole afternoon.
- A young couple now occupies the flat upstairs.
- Soldiers occupied the town within hours.

## Derived Forms
- cooccupy
- deoccupy
- misoccupy
- multioccupy
- nonoccupying
- occupiable
- occupier
- preoccupy
- reoccupy

## Related Forms
- occupant
- occupation

## Roots and Affixes
- Root: *kap-
- Root: occupien
- Root: occuper
- Root: occupō

## Etymology
From Middle English occupien, occupyen, borrowed from Old French occuper, from Latin occupāre (“to take possession of, seize, occupy, take up, employ”), from ob (“to, on”) + capiō (“to take”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to seize, grab”). Doublet of occupate, now obsolete.

## AI Etymology
Occupy comes from Middle English occupien, occupyen, borrowed from Old French occuper, from Latin occupāre (“to take possession of, seize, occupy, take up, employ”), from ob (“to, on”) + capiō (“to take”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to seize, grab”). Doublet of occupate, now obsolete. Modern senses include to fill or take up a space or amount of time and to keep someone busy or fill their attention. The wider word family includes derivatives such as cooccupy, deoccupy, misoccupy, multioccupy, nonoccupying, and occupiable and related forms such as occupant and occupation.

## Topics
- Space, Position & Direction
- Verbs of Movement

markdown

occupy

Meanings

Thesaurus

Common collocations

Etymology

Topics

External links

Keyboard Shortcuts

General

Send feedback