Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use compulsion in a sentence

30 example sentences · noun

Compulsion means an irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences. Example: “During the basketball game, I had a sudden compulsion to have a smoke.”

Examples of compulsion by meaning

nounAn irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences.

  • During the basketball game, I had a sudden compulsion to have a smoke.

nounThe use of authority, influence, or other power to force (compel) a person or persons to act.

  • From the opening of the City & South London Railway independent electric locomotives were used under compulsion of the Board of Trade.1941 May, “Jubilee of the City Tube”, in Railway Magazine, page 223
  • But Treaty translator and Ottawa leader Andrew Blackbird described the Treaty as made “not with the free will of the Indians, but by compulsion.”2016 January 17, “Wealthy cabals run America”, in Al Jazeera America, retrieved 18 Jan 2016

More sentences with compulsion

  • A demonlike compulsion drove him to destroy his life's work.From the entry demonlike
  • The classic compulsion loop is designed to either relieve some stress or trigger some reward, or both.2022, Carl D. Marci, Rewired: Protecting Your Brain in the Digital Age, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 191. From the entry compulsion loop
  • That he had some sickly compulsion neurosis, they said, was very plain for all eyes to see.2018, Anna Burns, Milkman, London: Faber & Faber, part 4. From the entry sickly
  • Of particular interest was the supposed compulsion to kill for blood (to drink).2014, Helen Gavin, Criminological and Forensic Psychology, page 306. From the entry haematophilia
  • A geas is a restriction or compulsion laid upon a person by a druid or a bard.2003, Arthur Rowan, The Lore of the Bard: A Guide to the Celtic and Druid Mysteries, Llewellyn Worldwide, page 126. From the entry geas
  • We’re under no compulsion to say that it is postmodern to be invariably concerned with ‘betrayal’.2001, Cristopher Nash, “[Ways of Speaking] Processes”, in The Unravelling of the Postmodern Mind, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press…. From the entry fineprint
  • I don't know how I got the compulsion to say all that.1985, Pao Kun Kuo, The Coffin Is Too Big For The Hole, →ISBN. From the entry aiyo
  • Brutal compulsion was the necessary accompaniment of the large-scale organization and the extensive order introduced by kingship.1967, Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, Harcourt, Brace & World, →ISBN, page 184. From the entry rabid
  • Of this form, the most characteristic, as I already said, is the compulsion neurosis.1946, A. A. Brill, Lectures on Psychoanalytic Psychiatry, Alfred Knopf, page 220. From the entry compulsion neurosis
  • A dusty collection of old selves, old interests, old compulsions, piled on top of each other like geological strata.2025 June 17, Joan Westenberg, “I Deleted My Second Brain”, in A newsletter about tech + philosophy, archived from the original on 28 Jun…. From the entry second brain
  • Almost all video games are based on compulsion loops.2022, Carl D. Marci, Rewired: Protecting Your Brain in the Digital Age, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 191. From the entry compulsion loop
  • From the beginning, competing impulses powered “Unsolved Mysteries”: a crusading compulsion to seek for justice and a market-driven need to entertain.2020, Alexis Soloski, “‘Unsolved Mysteries’ Returns, Because 2020 Isn’t Scary Enough”, in The New York Times. From the entry seek for
  • In this case, I can only guess that some past trauma has left her with some Miss Havisham-esque compulsion towards bridalwear.2015, Alison May, Sweet Nothing (21st Century Bard series; book 1), Choc Lit, →ISBN, chapter nineteen, page 112. From the entry Miss Havisham-esque
  • For the first time since beginning his macabre descent into the wayback, Eddie had no compulsion to follow his past.2009, Patrick Millikin, Phoenix Noir, →ISBN. From the entry wayback
  • For many poets such a compulsion might remain unfocused, a theme that inadvertently crosses wires and brings forth occasional sparks.1996, Kevin Stein, Private Poets, Worldly Acts, page 73. From the entry cross wires
  • To be sure, the fundamental tenets of honesty remain immutable; but business practices change—voluntarily or by legal compulsion.1943, Your Investments - Volume 4. From the entry epithetize
  • The compulsion to expose, renegotiate, or reinvent the strengths and weaknesses of dance tradition offers little in its final outcome to attract the average dance-goer.2013, Deborah Hay, My Body, The Buddhist, →ISBN, page 78. From the entry strength
  • Unlike the fascinations of the cross dresser or the partially altered transgenderist, the absolute compulsion of classical transsexualism is a matter of life and death.2012, Patrick Slattery, Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era. From the entry transsexualism
  • Such a compulsion has no precedence.2004, Intelligent Systems, translated by Nintendo of America, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Nintendo, GameCube, level/area: X-Naut…. From the entry precedence
  • Compulsion is universal, and any organization that is not part of the state must be its enemy, thus the enemy of the proletariat.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford…. From the entry organization
  • Getting in touch with the thoughts and feelings driving compulsions toward hate-scrolling, doomscrolling, or what I’ll call “envy-scrolling” across social media and news platforms is the first step.2020 March 20, Kenneth R. Rosen, “How to Stop Doomscrolling—With Psychology”, in Wired. From the entry envyscroll
  • The drug-taking he's writing about is less hippie than punk: it's about speed and smack and pills as much as hallucinogens and weed, about compulsion as well as escape.2011, Mike Marqusee, Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and the 1960s, →ISBN. From the entry hippie
  • As their rented van chunders along the highway, John′s voiceover is heard, contemplating the compulsion that drives men to continue using juvenile punk monikers into their mid-thirties.2007, George Melnyk, Great Canadian Film Directors, page 215. From the entry chunder
  • Under these compulsions, it is natural that there should be similarity of technique and style, even on occasion a sameishness in content, between avant-garde poetic movements in different countries.1974, Indian Committee for Cultural Freedom, Quest. From the entry sameishness
  • These actions may become symbolical, lose the traces of their origins, and thus prevent a superficial un-understandability in a manner not dissimilar to the compulsions of some neurotics.1935, James Wroten Woodard, Reificationand Supernaturalism as Factors in Social Rigidity and Social Change, Philadelphia, Pa.: University…. From the entry un-understandability
  • The compulsion to take the work or lose the dole left many families with barely any option at all, and sending the men up country created special losses and problems.2006, David J. Potts, The Myth of the Great Depression, page 220. From the entry lurkman
  • Perhaps it was partly his own “veiled eroticism” and suppressed incestuality that actually impelled in her the compulsion to create, taking its form in her sculptures of swelling pregnant women.1996, Susan Kavaler-Adler, “Diane Arbus and the Demon Lover”, in The Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity, New…. From the entry incestuality

Meaning of compulsion

  1. noun An irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences.
  2. noun The use of authority, influence, or other power to force (compel) a person or persons to act.
  3. noun The lawful use of violence (i.e. by the administration).

Full definition of compulsion

Questions about compulsion in a sentence

How do you use compulsion in a sentence?
Compulsion is used as a noun. For example: “During the basketball game, I had a sudden compulsion to have a smoke.”
What is a short sentence with compulsion?
“Such a compulsion has no precedence.”
What does compulsion mean?
Compulsion means an irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: compulsion (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use compulsion in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/compulsion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.