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To occupy in person; to hold or actually have in one's own keeping; to have and to hold. Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land. Jer. xxxii. 15. Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offense returning, to regain Love once possessed. Milton.

To engage by previous contract; to bind or attach previously; to preoccupy. But he was preëngaged by former ties. Dryden.

The act of preoccupying, or taking possession of beforehand; the state of being preoccupied; prepossession.

To preoccupy, as ground or land; to take previous possession of. Dryden.

To be set, or to sit, in the place of authority; to occupy the place of president, chairman, moderator, director, etc.; to direct, control, and regulate, as chief officer; as, to preside at a public meeting; to preside over the senate.

Occupying the first rank or chief place; having the highest authority; presiding. [R.] His angels president In every province. Milton.

e; -- so called by sportsmen. Puss in the corner, a game in which all the players but one occupy corners of a room, or certain goals in the open air, and exchange places, the one without a corner endeavoring to get a corner while it is vacant, leaving some other without one. -- Puss moth (Zoöl.), any one of several sp…

The constellation Aries, which does not now, as formerly, occupy the sign of the same name.

t which is reticulated; network; an organization resembling a net. The particular net you occupy in the great reticulation. Carlyle.

One of group of two to four united cells which occupy the axial part of the ocelli, or ommatidia, of the eyes of invertebrates, and contain the terminal nerve fibrillæ. See Illust. under Ommatidium.

To occupy a room or rooms; to lodge; as, they arranged to room together.

One of twe or more occupying the same room or rooms; one who shares the occupancy of a room or rooms; a chum.

To occupy one's self with getting laboriously; as, he scraped and saved until he became rich. "[Spend] their scraping fathers' gold." Shak.

To cause to occupy a post, site, situation, or the like; to station; to establish; to fix; to settle. Thus high . . . is King Richard seated. Shak. They had seated themselves in New Guiana. Sir W. Raleigh.

To come between; to keep apart by occupying the space between; to lie between; as, the Mediterranean Sea separates Europe and Africa.

a friend in Deacon Marble. H. W. Beecher. Common of shack (Eng.Law), the right of persons occupying lands lying together in the same common field to turn out their cattle to range in it after harvest. Cowell.

To hesitate; to act in an irresolute manner; hence, to occupy one's self with trifles.

To occupy a place or seat as a member of an official body; as, to sit in Congress.

One of a race of people occupying a large part of Eastern and Northern Europe, including the Russians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, Servo-Croats, Slovenes, Poles, Czechs, Wends or Sorbs, Slovaks, etc. [Written also Slave, and Sclav.]

A projection from the round base of a column, occupying the angle of a square plinth upon which the base rests, or bringing the bottom bed of the base to a nearly square form. It is generally carved in leafage.