Library / English Dictionary

COMPEL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected forms: compelled    , compelling   

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Force somebody to do something

Example:

We compel all students to fill out this form

Synonyms:

compel; obligate; oblige

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "compel" is one way to...):

cause; get; have; induce; make; stimulate (cause to do; cause to act in a specified manner)

Cause:

act; move (perform an action, or work out or perform (an action))

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "compel"):

force; thrust (impose urgently, importunately, or inexorably)

walk (make walk)

coerce; force; hale; pressure; squeeze (to cause to do through pressure or necessity, by physical, moral or intellectual means)

clamor (compel someone to do something by insistent clamoring)

condemn (compel or force into a particular state or activity)

shame (compel through a sense of shame)

apply; enforce; implement (ensure observance of laws and rules)

constrain; enforce; impose (compel to behave in a certain way)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody to INFINITIVE

Sentence example:

They compel him to write the letter

Derivation:

compulsion (using force to cause something to occur)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Necessitate or exact

Example:

the water shortage compels conservation

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Hypernyms (to "compel" is one way to...):

ask; call for; demand; involve; necessitate; need; postulate; require; take (require as useful, just, or proper)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Credits

 Context examples: 

Anyone who had the design to alarm these people would be compelled to place his very face against the glass before he could be seen.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The King himself was staying at Castle Malwood, but several of his suite had been compelled to seek such quarters as they might find in the wooden or wattle-and-daub cottages of the village.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

One key science finding in 2012 provided compelling support for the hypothesis that Mercury harbors abundant frozen water and other volatile materials in its permanently shadowed polar craters.

(NASA Spacecraft Achieves Unprecedented Success Studying Mercury, NASA)

I fear you will compel me to go through a private marriage ceremony, besides that performed at the altar.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

But new considerations have at last compelled me to alter my resolution.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The subjects of which her heart had been full on leaving Kellynch, and which she had felt slighted, and been compelled to smother among the Musgroves, were now become but of secondary interest.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

This massive man compelled one's attention and respect.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Anxiety disorders in which the essential feature is persistent and irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that the individual feels compelled to avoid.

(Phobia, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

These unfrozen materials appear to be relics of past surface ecosystems and the findings provide compelling evidence that they now provide deep subsurface habitats for microbial life despite extreme environmental conditions.

(Discovered deep under Antarctic surface: Extensive, salty aquifer and potentially vast microbial habitat, NSF)

At their backs rose a perpendicular wall of rock, and Perrault and François were compelled to make their fire and spread their sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)