Word.ws English Dictionary

compelled

Syllables: com·pelled/kəmˈpɛld/

compelled adjective: driven; forced. Also the simple past and past participle of compel.

Adjective

compelled (comparative more compelled, superlative most compelled)

  1. Driven; forced.
    • I do believe state policymakers are very compelled to address those early years.2013, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Education and the Workforce, Education Research, page 42
    • I was very compelled by the experience of watching Hamlet and the opening scene that has the ghost of his father on the parapet saying, “Revenge my death.”2021, Lew Hunter, Naked Screenwriting

Also used as

compelled is also the simple past and past participle of compel.

Forms of compelled

comparativemore compelled
superlativemost compelled

Words formed from compelled

Phrases with compelled

Words that rhyme with compelled

8 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about compelled

What does compelled mean?
Compelled means driven; forced.
What part of speech is compelled?
Compelled is an adjective.
How do you pronounce compelled?
Compelled is pronounced /kəmˈpɛld/.

Words near compelled in the dictionary

  1. compellation
  2. compellations
  3. compellative
  4. compellatives
  5. compellatory
  6. compelled
  7. compelled speech
  8. compelled testimony
  9. compelledly
  10. compellence
  11. compellent

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: compelled (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-compelled.ogg.

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