Occupy Meaning
/ˈɒkjʊpaɪ/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
verbTo take or use.
verbTo take or use., To fill.
Sentence Examples
Smokers are asked to occupy the rear seats.
I think I will occupy myself in my father's business.
The bed seemed to occupy most of the room.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The large sofa ____ most of the living room space.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The new office building will ____ the entire block once the final stage of construction is finished.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom relaxed. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair, the judge occupied by his own guilty thoughts, and I by others not less disturbing."
— 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
"The better apartments were already occupied."
— 1824, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], Tales of a Traveller, (please specify |part=1 to 4), Philadelphia, Pa.: H[enry] C[harles] Carey & I[saac] Lea, […], →OCLC:
"With fresh material, taxonomic conclusions are leavened by recognition that the material examined reflects the site it occupied; a herbarium packet gives one only a small fraction of the data desirable for sound conclusions. Herbarium material does not, indeed, allow one to extrapolate safely: what you see is what you get[…]"
— 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page vii:
"The Japanese can occupy but cannot hold, and what they can hold they cannot hold long, was the opinion of General Pai Chung-hsi, Chief of the General Staff of the Chinese Army, […]"
— 1940, The China monthly review, volumes 94-95, page 370:
"Rupert, with his usual untamable energy, was scouring the country — but at first in the wrong direction, that of Aylesbury, another keypoint in the outer ring of Oxford defences, which he occupied but could not hold."
— 1975, Esmé Cecil Wingfield-Stratford, King Charles and King Pym, 1637-1643, page 330:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The large sofa ____ most of the living room space.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The new office building will ____ the entire block once the final stage of construction is finished.