Fixation

How to spell fixation

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce fixation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fixation mean?

1. nounAn obsessive preoccupation with a single thing, person, or idea.
2. nounThe process of converting a substance into a stable or non-volatile form, as when nitrogen is captured into compounds.

Fixation in a sentence

• His fixation with tidiness made the office uncomfortably rigid.

• Nitrogen fixation allows certain bacteria to enrich the soil naturally.

• The magazine criticised society's fixation on celebrity gossip.

• Carbon fixation by plants removes the gas from the atmosphere.

Where does fixation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb figere, which meant 'to fasten, drive in, or fix in place'. Its past participle fixus gave rise to medieval Latin fixatio, a noun describing the act of making something firm or steady. English picked it up in the early seventeenth century, first in the technical vocabulary of alchemy and chemistry, where it described turning a volatile substance into a stable, solid one. From there the meaning broadened: a mind that becomes 'fixed' on a single object or idea was said to suffer a fixation, a sense that psychology later made famous through Freudian theory. The same figere root still anchors everyday relatives such as 'fix', 'affix', and 'prefix', and remembering that 'fix' sits at the front keeps the spelling straightforward.

How the word is built

• fix- (from Latin figere: to fasten)
• -at- (verb-forming element)
• -ion (noun suffix denoting a process or state)