possessivity

noun — 2 senses

possessivity

noun

Etymology From possessive + -ity.

1

Grammar, Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences The quality of being possessive (indicating ownership, possession, origin, etc.).

2

Rare The quality of being possessive (unwilling to yield possession).

  • And yet there is this June, this damned Jewish vulture gnawing into my vitals whether I want it or not—first with her possessivity, her jealousy, her overwhelming sex and clawing beak, and now with hatred and malice and vindictiveness.1933 May 19, Henry Miller, “Quiet Days in Clichy: 1932–33”, in George Wickes, editor, Letters to Emil, New York, N.Y.: New Directions Books, published 1989, →ISBN, page 121:
  • If the erotic ambiguity of such figures is to be attributed both to the ambiguity of the painter’s desires (always fighting between unconscious erotical fancies, developed to the point of rape (The abandoned, 1964, and Oedipical idealization, I have dealt with previously) and to the ambiguity of his mother’s behaviour (who during her life denied herself physically, but substancially^([sic]) gave herself through her possessivity and the charms of her interested misogyny, handed over to her son and representing a form of lover’s jealousy).1979, Terzoocchio, volumes 5–7, Bologna: Edizioni Bora, →OCLC:
2 more examples
  • His possessivity is just another form of his unrelentless love, that he wants to offer me.2020, Elvira Tania, “Kindly Possessive”, in Cinta Tidak Sesakit Itu, Yogyakarta: Stiletto Indie Book, →ISBN, page 23:
  • Pietrangeli’s Andrea takes Crommelynck’s Bruno a step further in the psychological exploration of envy through Andrea’s projection of his guilt onto and his possessivity toward Maria Grazia in a crisis of the visual and auditory registers that only cinema can represent in its devastating and provocative fullness.2020, Emma Katherine Van Ness, “Breaking Faith: Il magnifico cornuto, Envy and the Crisis of Vision”, in Antonio Pietrangeli, the Director of Women: Feminism and Film Theory in Postwar Italian Cinema, London; New York, N.Y.: Anthem Press, →ISBN:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.