Word of the Day:
compulsion
What It Means
An irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences.
The use of authority, influence, or other power to force (compel) a person or persons to act.
The lawful use of violence (i.e. by the administration).
During the basketball game, I had a sudden compulsion to have a smoke.
Compulsion in Context
“But Treaty translator and Ottawa leader Andrew Blackbird described the Treaty as made “not with the free will of the Indians, but by compulsion.””
Did You Know?
Borrowed from Middle French compulsion, from Late Latin compulsiō, from Latin compellere (“to compel, coerce”); see compel.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: compulsion (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “compulsion.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/compulsion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
