Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Characterized by or inclined to coercion.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Having power to coerce, as by law, authority, or force; restraining; constraining.
- noun That which coerces; that which constrains or restrains.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Serving or intended to coerce; having power to constrain.
- adjective (Magnetism) the power or force which in iron or steel produces a slowness or difficulty in imparting magnetism to it, and also interposes an obstacle to the return of a bar to its natural state when active magnetism has ceased. It plainly depends on the molecular constitution of the metal.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Displaying a tendency or intent to
coerce .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective serving or intended to coerce
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Among other things, they suggest that even now, under your government, there are what they call coercive measures by official agencies, including religious police organizations, that require Afghans to follow specific religious practices and require women to conform to stringent codes of dress, movement and behavior.
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There's a report in the L.A. Times today that says one of the things the administration is looking at is what they describe as coercive inspections, which I guess means the inspectors would go back into Iraq but with military forces of some sort backing them up.
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However, in practice such cases rarely are, so the government is considering whether the legal definition should be widened to expressly include what it calls "coercive control".
BBC News - Home 2011
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The women in this case to have what I call the coercive option; for I would not have it in the man's power to be a dog neither.
Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 6 Samuel Richardson 1725
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He's saying (if I read him correctly) that coercive/not-coercive is a false dichotomy and that even Libertopia will involve coercion.
Another Herring, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Lots of animals, including many primates, engage in coercive sex.
The Volokh Conspiracy » “I, for One, Welcome My Neandertal Ancestry” 2010
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MCM: Lots of animals, including many primates, engage in coercive sex.
The Volokh Conspiracy » “I, for One, Welcome My Neandertal Ancestry” 2010
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I don't understand how your view of freedom doesn't result in coercive situations, and to argue that kids can just switch schools when they have a teacher that is evangelizing to them is impractical on several counts, including that for many it's just not geographically possible.
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"A conceivable alternative would be government rationing and the allocation of important goods or the setting of production schedules and other short-term coercive measures to replace market-based mechanisms in times of crisis."
TreeHugger 2010
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There are plenty of non-legal norms that are more coercive in the common everyday sense of the word coercive than some legal norms.
Lessig Blog Lessig 2009
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