| Library / English Dictionary |
COMPELLING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Tending to persuade by forcefulness of argument
Example:
new and compelling evidence
Classified under:
Similar:
persuasive (intended or having the power to induce action or belief)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Driving or forcing
Example:
compelling ambition
Classified under:
Similar:
powerful (having great power or force or potency or effect)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb compel
Context examples:
He was bent upon compelling me to show him the wisdom of pictures. Besides, he had remarkable powers of visualization. I had long since learned this. He visualized everything.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
Despite compelling statistics we still do not understand biochemically why heart defects are so prevalent.
(NFAT Pathway, NCI Thesaurus/BIOCARTA)
And so unmeasureable is the ambition of princes, that he seemed to think of nothing less than reducing the whole empire of Blefuscu into a province, and governing it, by a viceroy; of destroying the Big-endian exiles, and compelling that people to break the smaller end of their eggs, by which he would remain the sole monarch of the whole world.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
If you sell for a living or are in marketing, public relations, or TV production, you will be persuasive without being pushy, presenting your product or service in the best light, in a gentle but compelling way.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
Strength balanced sensuousness and had upon it a tonic effect, compelling him to love beauty that was healthy and making him vibrate to sensations that were wholesome.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Life flowed past him, deep and wide and varied, continually impinging upon his senses, demanding of him instant and endless adjustments and correspondences, and compelling him, almost always, to suppress his natural impulses.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
The very simplicity of his reasoning was its strength, and his materialism was far more compelling than the subtly complex materialism of Charley Furuseth.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Using a novel, helicopter-borne sensor to penetrate the surface of large swathes of terrain, a team of researchers has gathered compelling evidence that beneath Antarctica's ice-free McMurdo Dry Valleys lies a salty aquifer that may support previously unknown microbial ecosystems and retain evidence of ancient climate change.
(Discovered deep under Antarctic surface: Extensive, salty aquifer and potentially vast microbial habitat, NSF)
In fact, though this strength pervaded every action of his, it seemed but the advertisement of a greater strength that lurked within, that lay dormant and no more than stirred from time to time, but which might arouse, at any moment, terrible and compelling, like the rage of a lion or the wrath of a storm.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
They were eyes that masked the soul with a thousand guises, and that sometimes opened, at rare moments, and allowed it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the world on some wonderful adventure,—eyes that could brood with the hopeless sombreness of leaden skies; that could snap and crackle points of fire like those which sparkle from a whirling sword; that could grow chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm and soften and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and masculine, luring and compelling, which at the same time fascinate and dominate women till they surrender in a gladness of joy and of relief and sacrifice.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
