Definition of "occupy"

(transitive, of time) To take or use.

1. To fill.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • 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.

2. To possess or use the time or capacity of; to engage the service of.  examples

3. To fill or hold (an official position or role).  examples

4. To hold the attention of.  examples

(transitive) To take or use space.

1. To fill space.  examples

2. To live or reside in.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • 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, […]

   • 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, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, page vii

3. (military) To have, or to have taken, possession or control of (a territory).  quotations

   Quotations

   • 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

   • One of the rebel marksmen, who had taken up position on a boulder, was knocked off it by the recoil of his weapon every time he fired. Again the attack achieved nothing. Positions were occupied, but could not be held.

     1983, Arthur Keppel-Jones, Rhodes and Rhodesia: The White Conquest of Zimbabwe, 1884-1902, page 462

   • Germany occupied France for three years while France struggled to make payments that were a condition of surrender.

     1991, Werner Spies, John William Gabriel, Max Ernst collages: the invention of the surrealist universe, page 333

   • Spain occupied, but could not populate, and its failure to expand Florida led Britain to consider the peninsula a logical extension of its colonial holdings.

     2006, John Michael Francis, Iberia and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, page 496

4. (surveying) To place the theodolite or total station at (a point).  examples

(transitive, obsolete) To have sexual intercourse with.  quotations

(obsolete) To do business in; to busy oneself with.  quotations

(obsolete) To use; to expend; to make use of.  quotations