What's the difference between coerce and compel?

Coerce


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To restrain by force, especially by law or authority; to repress; to curb.
  • (v. t.) To compel or constrain to any action; as, to coerce a man to vote for a certain candidate.
  • (v. t.) To compel or enforce; as, to coerce obedience.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Negative feelings were expressed significantly more often by those who felt coerced into hospital and those admitted compulsorily.
  • (2) "I am deeply concerned that a private security firm is not only providing policing on the cheap but failing to show a duty of care to its staff and threatening to withdraw an opportunity to work at the Olympics as a means to coerce them to work unpaid."
  • (3) And as Kelly observed, Walker’s position is massively unpopular, and for good reason: the idea that a woman should be coerced by the state to carry a pregnancy to term even at the risk of her life is the purest barbarism.
  • (4) In other cases the unauthorised sharing of intimate material, or the threat to do so, is intended to harass the subject or coerce them to engage in conduct against their will.
  • (5) Mohammadi Ashtiani has appeared on state TV three times, but activists say her apparent confessions had been coerced.
  • (6) Among the interactions we observed coerced imagination, difficulties in identification, personal relationships based on abandonment with persecutory projection of the female figure and a tendency toward immature defences such as avoidance, denial and acting out.
  • (7) The guidelines say that prosecutions should not be brought under obscenity laws but on the basis of the menace and humiliation intended, and in the most serious cases, where intimate images are used to coerce victims into further sexual activity, under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
  • (8) The department relied on this coerced statement almost exclusively.” Patrick Weil, a visiting professor at Yale law school, says the State Department is acting outside its authority.
  • (9) These creatures are essentially coerced into performing entertaining tricks for the benefit of a public audience, but one whale has been linked to the deaths of three people.
  • (10) Negative consequences are more likely among those in India, those coerced into having a sterilization, those who did not understand the consequences of the procedure, those with health complications after sterilization, and those couples who have unstable marriages or who disagree about sterilization.
  • (11) It includes very ambivalent women, those coerced into abortion, and those at the legal time limit.
  • (12) Employees highly coerced into entering industrial alcoholism programs because of affected job performance reported a higher proportion of work improvement than those in treatment for other reasons.
  • (13) September 16 2010 Sakineh again appears on state TV, denying that she has been tortured or coerced in any way.
  • (14) He was set to be extradited to Sweden, where he faces accusations of raping a woman and sexually molesting and coercing another in Stockholm while on a visit to give a lecture in August 2010.
  • (15) This paper provides an insight into the mechanism of a coerced-internalized type of false confession.
  • (16) In Nepal over the last decade hundreds of children were coerced from their families with promises of a better education and then sold without their parents' knowledge to American couples.
  • (17) EH: I'm not in favour of legislation that opens the floodgates for unjustified cases of people who are either ­vulnerable or coerced, or for a change in the attitude that leads to that happening.
  • (18) Persons who have received incomplete information, are incompetent, have been coerced, or are psychodynamically overcome cannot give valid consent or refusal.
  • (19) Dorries tells me that she has spoken to about 200 women who have had abortions (as a side note, she says that every single one "felt that she was coerced by somebody into her abortion, whether it was a partner, a parent, a teacher", which is unlike the experience of anyone I've ever known), and so I am surprised by her reply when I ask how many women she has spoken to who have had late-term abortions.
  • (20) Detective Chief Inspector Gary Booth, who led the investigation, told a news conference that Wilson had manipulated and coerced his victims.

Compel


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To drive or urge with force, or irresistibly; to force; to constrain; to oblige; to necessitate, either by physical or moral force.
  • (v. t.) To take by force or violence; to seize; to exact; to extort.
  • (v. t.) To force to yield; to overpower; to subjugate.
  • (v. t.) To gather or unite in a crowd or company.
  • (v. t.) To call forth; to summon.
  • (v. i.) To make one yield or submit.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But he lost much of his earnings betting on cards and horses, and he has readily admitted that it was losses of up to £750,000 a night that compelled him to make some of his worst films.
  • (2) This provides a compelling argument that the protein kinase function of p37mos is an intrinsic property of the protein.
  • (3) Compelling evidence of the transference in this case occurred in the ninth month of treatment when the therapist told the child that she would be going on vacation.
  • (4) "We continue to believe that our final proposal was compelling and represented full value for AstraZeneca based on the information that was available to us," said the British-born executive.
  • (5) These advances will compel hospitals to plan for their funding and implementation.
  • (6) Certainly the affidavit against Ferdaus paints a compelling picture of a man hellbent on waging jihad in America and eager to take the guns and explosives eventually supplied to him by the undercover FBI agents.
  • (7) The Hollande team maintained that all topics were on the table and also held open the prospect that France could refuse to ratify Merkel's fiscal pact compelling debt and deficit reduction in the eurozone unless eurobonds were recognised as a possible tool.
  • (8) As a self-described rationalist, she felt compelled to act.
  • (9) Brown makes policy statements all the time, and we know exactly what he's said about social justice etc - but he has never been able to give the public a compelling answer to this question.
  • (10) The evidence has long been compelling that the primary fuel of what the US calls terrorism are the very policies of aggression justified in the name of stopping terrorism .
  • (11) Christine Langan of BBC Films told Screen Daily: "Compelling, funny and moving, Gold is a gem of a story and BBC Films is proud to be participating in bringing it to an international audience."
  • (12) The symbolism and the politics of the law are far more troubling and far more toxic than the actual substance of what the law will do itself.” That symbolism compelled store owners in Indianapolis to put up signs that say: “Instead of hate, we proudly serve everyone,” “This Hoosier still opposes the anti-LGBT license to discriminate,” and “Open for service!
  • (13) The bill, voted through a panel of the house energy and power subcommittee, would compel Obama to over-rule demands for a further review of the project from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and disregard local opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline from landowners along its 1,700-mile route.
  • (14) Pickles said he would also be making an order under the Local Government Act 2000 to compel Rotherham council to hold all-out elections in 2016 and every fourth year thereafter.
  • (15) In the Museum of the Warsaw Rising, the sound effects are powerful, the visuals compelling, the tragedy forcefully conveyed.
  • (16) Because we're a species of storytellers, we find movie-plot threats uniquely compelling .
  • (17) These results were perceived as scientifically compelling as well as clinically relevant.
  • (18) Extraterrestrials Decades of searching for signs of alien life have so far turned up a blank, yet the question of whether life on Earth is a one-off is among the most compelling in science.
  • (19) Although findings in animals are compelling, observations in humans are less clear.
  • (20) His videos make for compelling first-person testimony.