Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or practice of coercing.
  • noun Power or ability to coerce.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Compulsion; forcible constraint; the act of controlling by force or arms.
  • noun Power of restraint or compulsion.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act or process of coercing.
  • noun (Law) The application to another of either physical or moral force. When the force is physical, and cannot be resisted, then the act produced by it is a nullity, so far as concerns the party coerced. When the force is moral, then the act, though voidable, is imputable to the party doing it, unless he be so paralyzed by terror as to act convulsively. At the same time coercion is not negatived by the fact of submission under force. “Coactus volui” (I consented under compulsion) is the condition of mind which, when there is volition forced by coercion, annuls the result of such coercion.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun not countable Actual or threatened force for the purpose of compelling action by another person; the act of coercing.
  • noun law, not countable Use 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.
  • noun countable A specific instance of coercing.
  • noun computing, countable Conversion of a value of one data type to a value of another data type.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun using force to cause something to occur
  • noun the act of compelling by force of authority

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin coercitiō ("magesterial coercion"), from coercere, past participle coercitus ("to restrain, coerce"), from cum ("with") + arceō ("to shut in, enclose"); see coerce.

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