English citations of occupy

  • 1990 April 21, Laura Briggs, “Changes In Foster Care Policy Irk Homophobes”, in Gay Community News, page 1:
    A man entering the Herald offices taunted the demonstrator with shouts of "censorship," while the police occupied another man who wanted to set up a microphone to preach against the sin of homosexuality.
  • 2009, Herbert R. Reginbogin, Detlev F. Vagts, Faces of Neutrality: A Comparative Analysis of the Neutrality of Switzerland, page 191:
    In the spring of 1940 Germany occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

to take possession of (but not necessarily keep) edit

  • 1940, in The China monthly review, volumes 94-95, page 370 [1]:
    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, []
  • 1975, Esmé Cecil Wingfield-Stratford, King Charles and King Pym, 1637-1643, page 330 [2]:
    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.
  • 1983, Arthur Keppel-Jones, Rhodes and Rhodesia: The White Conquest of Zimbabwe, 1884-1902, page 462:
    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.
  • 2006, John Michael Francis, Iberia and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, page 496:
    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.