preoccupy.
To distract; to draw attention elsewhere.
Meaning & usage
To distract; to draw attention elsewhere.
The father tried to preoccupy the child with his keys.
To worry or concern (someone) so as to distract them.
It always preoccupies me when he acts like this.
To occupy or take possession of beforehand.
Where this word comes from
From pre- + occupy, after Middle French preoccuper, and its source, Latin praeoccupo, praeoccupare. Doublet of preoccupate, now obsolete.
Try it on your idea.
preoccupy has 9 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.
These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.
Explore the name generatorA word with a source.
Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.