Word.ws English Dictionary

coercion

UK/kəʊˈɜːʃən//koʊˈɝʒən/

coercion noun: actual or threatened force for the purpose of compelling action by another person; the act of coercing.

Noun

coercion (countable and uncountable, plural coercions)

  1. (uncountable) Actual or threatened force for the purpose of compelling action by another person; the act of coercing.
    • One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion.1947 March 12, Harry S. Truman, 5:24 from the start, in MP72-14 Excerpt - Truman Doctrine Speech, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives Identifier: 595162
  2. (uncountable) Use of physical or moral force to compel a person to do something, or to abstain from doing something, thereby depriving that person of the exercise of free will.
  3. (countable) A specific instance of coercing.
  4. (countable) Conversion of a value of one data type to a value of another data type.
  5. The process by which the meaning of a word or other linguistic element is reinterpreted to match the grammatical context.
    • But often the pieces of information do not fit together and have to be shifted in meaning to confirm with the rest of the sentence. These shifts are called coercion2008, Oliver Bott, “Doing It Again and Again May Be Difficult, But It Depends on What You Are Doing”, in Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, page 63
    • ...a conversion of mass nouns into count readings according to sorter and portion coercion is only possible if the denotation of a mass noun already comprises minimal parts into which the noun can be subdivided.2016, Susanne Mohr, “From Accra to Nairobi – the use of pluralized mass nouns in East and West African postcolonial Englishes”, in Daniel Schmidt-Brücken, Susanne Schuster, Marina Wienberg, editors...
  6. The initiation or threat of conflict; aggression.

coercion meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

coercion in Hindi

actual or threatened force for the purpose of compelling action by another person
ज़ोर-जबरदस्ती zor-jabardastī
use of force to compel
प्रपीड़न prapīṛan, ज़ोर-जबरदस्ती zor-jabardastī

coercion in Tamil

அச்சுறுத்தல், வலுக் காட்டாயம், வலுக்கட்டாயம், வல்லந்தத் தடுப்பு, நிர்ப்பந்தம், கட்டாயப்படுத்துதல்

coercion in Marathi

जबरदस्ती

coercion in Urdu

غصب, جبر, زبردستی, زور
More languagesFewer languages
coercion in Bengali
জোর, চাপ দিয়ে কিছু করানো
coercion in Telugu
బలవంతం
coercion in Malayalam
സമ്മർദ്ദം sammaṟddaṁ
coercion in Kannada
ದಬ್ಬಾಳಿಕೆಯ
coercion in Punjabi
ਦਬਾਅ dabāa
coercion in Gujarati
બળજબરી baḷjabrī, જબરદસ્તી jabardastī
coercion in Arabic
قَهْر qahr, قَسْر qasr, غَصْب ḡaṣb, عَنْت ʕant
coercion in Indonesian
paksaan
coercion in Vietnamese
sự ép buộc

Examples of coercion in a sentence

  • Coercion and intimidation are the hammer and anvil of experienced police officers.
  • True leadership lies in compassion, not in coercion.
  • Understanding subjectedness unrelated to coercion, by contrast, makes it dependent on the wording of the respective rules, which appears arbitrary.

All 17 example sentences with coercion

Antonyms of coercion

Forms of coercion

pluralcoercions
alternative misspellingcoersion
alternative form (dated)coërcion

Plural of coercion: coercions

Origin of coercion

Inherited from Middle English cohercioun, from Old French cohercion, from Latin coërcitiō (“magisterial coercion”), from past participle coercitus of coërceō (“to restrain, coerce”), from co- (“with”) + arceō (“to shut in, enclose”); see coerce.

Words formed from coercion

Phrases with coercion

Questions about coercion

What does coercion mean?
Coercion means actual or threatened force for the purpose of compelling action by another person; the act of coercing.
What is coercion in Hindi?
Coercion in Hindi is ज़ोर-जबरदस्ती (zor-jabardastī), प्रपीड़न (prapīṛan). See Coercion meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is coercion?
Coercion is a noun.
How do you pronounce coercion?
Coercion is pronounced /kəʊˈɜːʃən/ (UK).
What is the plural of coercion?
The plural of coercion is coercions.

Words near coercion in the dictionary

  1. coercibleness
  2. coercibly
  3. coercimeter
  4. coercimeters
  5. coercing
  6. coercion
  7. coercionary
  8. coercionist
  9. coercionists
  10. coercions
  11. coercitive

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coercion (page history and authors); coercion (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); coercion (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); coercion (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); coercion (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); coercion (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); സമ്മർദ്ദം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); coercion (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ਦਬਾਅ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); જબરદસ્તી (Gujarati) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-coercion.ogg.

Cite this entry: “coercion.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/coercion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.