coerce
verb
Simple meaning
To use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in an try to compel one to act against their will.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kohursSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
koʊˈɝs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
transitive
To use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in an attempt to compel one to act against their will.
transitivecomputing
To force an attribute, normally of a data type, to take on the attribute of another data type.
transitive
To restrain by force, especially by law or authority; to repress; to curb.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in an attempt to compel one to act against their will.
Used this way, coerce is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It criticises, but without shouting.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Critical but measured
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.