Coercion Meaning
/koʊˈɜːʃən/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounActual or threatened force for the purpose of compelling action by another person; the act of coercing.
nounUse 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.
Sentence Examples
If you don't listen to us, we will have to resort to coercion.
Leadership by coercion would not produce the results we see.
Synonyms & Antonyms
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
None
CEFR Practice Quiz
The government's use of ____ to force citizens into compliance violated their rights.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The confession was obtained through ____ and was not valid.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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:
"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 coercion"
— 2008, 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, Aspects of (Post)Colonial Linguistics, Berlin: DeGruyter, →OCLC, page 161:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The government's use of ____ to force citizens into compliance violated their rights.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The confession was obtained through ____ and was not valid.