What's the difference between compel and persuade?

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.

Persuade


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To influence or gain over by argument, advice, entreaty, expostulation, etc.; to draw or incline to a determination by presenting sufficient motives.
  • (v. t.) To try to influence.
  • (v. t.) To convince by argument, or by reasons offered or suggested from reflection, etc.; to cause to believe.
  • (v. t.) To inculcate by argument or expostulation; to advise; to recommend.
  • (v. i.) To use persuasion; to plead; to prevail by persuasion.
  • (n.) Persuasion.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Gordon Brown believes that the fact of the G20 summit has persuaded many tax havens, such as Switzerland and Liechtenstein, to indicate that they will adopt a more open approach.
  • (2) An official from Cafcass, the children and family court advisory service, tried to persuade the child in several interviews, but eventually the official told the court that further persuasion was inappropriate and essentially abusive.
  • (3) She kept it up for three years, until her son's letters finally persuaded her to cut down to one day a week.
  • (4) We simply do whatever nature needs and will work with anyone that wants to help wildlife.” His views might come as a surprise to some of the RSPB’s 1.1 million members, who would have been persuaded by its original pledge “to discourage the wanton destruction of birds”; they would equally have been a surprise to the RSPB’s detractors in the shooting world.
  • (5) That refusal seems to have persuaded Apple's team, which has been core to the development of WebKit since using it for the Safari browser, released in January 2003, to introduce WebKit2 earlier this year which did offer that capability.
  • (6) It seeks to acquaint them with 'ethical' arguments against their work which, because they are simple and plausible, persuade many people.
  • (7) Obama will meet with Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas tomorrow as well, but US envoy George Mitchell has had no luck in recent weeks trying to persuade Netanyahu to compromise on the settlements.
  • (8) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (9) The writer John Lanchester concedes that democracies will always need spies, but reading the Snowden documents persuaded him that piecing together habits of thought from internet searches takes things far beyond conventional spying: “Google doesn’t just know you’re gay before you tell your mum; it knows you’re gay before you do.
  • (10) But Richard Hall, director of infrastructure at Consumer Futures, a consumer watchdog, said Ofgem had "produced a lot of evidence that would persuade a third party that there is a trend [of rising prices]".
  • (11) McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate with an influential voice on US foreign affairs, is seen by the Obama administration as a potentially important intermediary in its intensive push to persuade Congress to swing behind the plan for airstrikes .
  • (12) According to Deborah Mattinson, his pollster, Brown " loved slogans and believed them to be imbued with a mystical power capable of persuading the most intransigent voter", and therefore went a bundle on them – not least " A future fair for all ", the surreal dud with which Labour went to the country in 2010, following 2005's equally idiotic " forward not back ".
  • (13) For a while North Korea refused to play, but after delicate negotiations the players were persuaded back on to the pitch and the correct flag was displayed alongside the team photos.
  • (14) When the owners of Manchester City finally managed to persuade Pep Guardiola to oversee the next stage of their masterplan it is fair to say they probably did not expect to be approaching Christmas scuffling with a team of Watford’s limitations for their first league win at home in almost three months.
  • (15) He has some suggestions for what might be done, including easing changing the planning laws to free up parts of the green belt, financial incentives to persuade local authorities to build, and the replacement of the council tax and stamp duty land tax with a new local property tax with automatic annual revaluations.
  • (16) Even if nobody switched party, the general election result would look very different to what’s predicted if millennials could be persuaded to vote at the same rate as pensioners, as polls factor in turnout differences and oversample the elderly accordingly.
  • (17) For some people, free cash will persuade them to take the plunge.
  • (18) The fact that the leave campaign are getting things as straightforward as this wrong should call into judgment the bigger argument about leaving the EU.” He said out campaigners were trying to persuade people to vote for Brexit solely on the back of an issue “that is not true”.
  • (19) We had already persuaded him to give us a little extra time, telling him we would both pay him on a particular day, but when that day rolled around, neither of us had the money.
  • (20) Nonetheless, the NSA persuaded Erwin Griswold, the former dean of Harvard law school, the then solicitor general of the United States, to knowingly lie to the United States supreme court that it was still a secret.