possession

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act or fact of possessing.
• noun The state of being possessed.
• noun Something owned or possessed.
• noun A territory subject to foreign control.
• noun Power or control over something.
• noun Occupation or control of a piece of property, with or without ownership.
• noun A right of occupation and use.
• noun The crime of possessing an illegal drug.
• noun The state of being dominated or controlled by a demon or spirit.
• noun The state of being occupied or obsessed with something, such as an idea.
• noun Physical control of the ball or puck by a player or team.
• noun An instance of this.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To invest with property.
• noun In the terminology of psychical research, a change of mental disposition, occurring in the state of trance, so marked as to suggest the substitution of a novel personality for the known personality of the subject.
• noun The act of possessing, or the state of being possessed; the having, holding, or detaining of property in one's power or control; the state of owning or controlling; actual seizing or occupancy, either rightful or wrongful. One man may have the possession of a thing, and another may have the right of property in it.
• noun In law, the physical control which belongs of right to unqualified ownership; the having a thing in such manner as to exclude the control of other persons; that detention of or dominion over a thing by one person which precludes others from the adverse physical occupancy of or dominion over it.
• noun The thing possessed; in the plural, goods, land, or rights owned; belongings: as, your friendship is one of my richest possessions; the French possessions.
• noun Hence Property; wealth.
• noun In international law, a country or territory held by right of conquest.
• noun Persuasion; conviction.
• noun The state of being under the control of evil spirits or of madness; madness; lunacy: as, demoniacal possession.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb obsolete To invest with property.
• noun The act or state of possessing, or holding as one's own.
• noun (Law) The having, holding, or detention of property in one's power or command; actual seizin or occupancy; ownership, whether rightful or wrongful.
• noun The thing possessed; that which any one occupies, owns, or controls; in the plural, property in the aggregate; wealth; dominion.
• noun The state of being possessed or controlled, as by an evil spirit, or violent passions; madness; frenzy.
• noun to put in another's power or occupancy.
• noun (Law) To place one in charge of property recovered in ejectment or writ of entry.
• noun to enter upon, or to bring within one's power or occupancy.
• noun (Law) a precept directing a sheriff to put a person in peaceable possession of property recovered in ejectment or writ of entry.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Something that someone possesses, but to which he does not necessarily have private property rights.
• noun Something that is owned.
• noun Ownership; taking, holding, keeping something as one's own.
• noun A territory under the rule of another country.
• noun The condition or affliction of being possessed by a demon or other supernatural entity.
• noun sports Control of the ball; the opportunity to be on the offensive.
• noun linguistics A syntactic relationship between two nouns or nominals that may be used to indicate ownership.
• verb obsolete To invest with property.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the trait of resolutely controlling your own behavior
• noun being controlled by passion or the supernatural
• noun a territory that is controlled by a ruling state
• noun anything owned or possessed
• noun the act of having and controlling property
• noun a mania restricted to one thing or idea
• noun (sport) the act of controlling the ball (or puck)