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IMPOSED
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Set forth authoritatively as obligatory
Example:
rules imposed by society
Classified under:
Similar:
obligatory (morally or legally constraining or binding)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb impose
Context examples:
I remembered also the necessity imposed upon me of either journeying to England or entering into a long correspondence with those philosophers of that country whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable use to me in my present undertaking.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
My father, indeed, imposed the determination, but since his death, I have not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs settled, a successor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of the feelings broken through or cut asunder—a last conflict with human weakness, in which I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed that I will overcome—and I leave Europe for the East.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
She was less and less able to endure the restraint which her father imposed.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
To Elizabeth, however, he voluntarily acknowledged that the necessity of his absence had been self-imposed.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
And to take care, said Mr. Wickfield, that you're not imposed on, eh?
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Europe has enforced capping regulations and the World Bank has proposed a ‘user fee’ to be imposed on those buying antibiotics for farm animals.
(Eat less meat to cut drug resistance, SciDev.Net)
The blunders, the blindness of her own head and heart!—she sat still, she walked about, she tried her own room, she tried the shrubbery—in every place, every posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly; that she had been imposed on by others in a most mortifying degree; that she had been imposing on herself in a degree yet more mortifying; that she was wretched, and should probably find this day but the beginning of wretchedness.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
The happiness with which their time now passed, every employment voluntary, every laugh indulged, every meal a scene of ease and good humour, walking where they liked and when they liked, their hours, pleasures, and fatigues at their own command, made her thoroughly sensible of the restraint which the general's presence had imposed, and most thankfully feel their present release from it.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Therefore, since my acquaintance were pleased to think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, I imposed on myself, as a maxim never to be swerved from, that I would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and example of my noble master and the other illustrious Houyhnhnms of whom I had so long the honour to be an humble hearer.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Ah! you carry it off very well, but I cannot be quite so far imposed on.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
