coercive
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of coercive
Explanation
If you use coercive measures to get people to join your club, it means that you intimidate or force people to make them feel like they have to join. If you use threats to get what you want from other people, your methods can be described as coercive. It can take nothing more than a strong sense of authority to come across as coercive, or the intimidation can take the form of physical threats. When you're coercive, you're demanding obedience without much concern for what the people you coerce need or want. The Latin root is coercere, which means "to control or restrain."
Vocabulary lists containing coercive
Grendel
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Content Summary 1.3: Origins of Complex Urban Societies in the Ancient World
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Content Summary 3.7: Postclassical Americas
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The bill would make it a criminal offence to provide conversion therapy, or to engage in coercive conversion behaviour, with the goal of changing a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.
From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026
That must include steps to end the use of any "coercive measure to divert the natural movement of the elephants", it read.
From Barron's ● Aug. 21, 2026
During the Cold War, U.S. presidents would have seen China’s coercive behavior as a strategic opportunity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
In a broad reshuffle of the leadership in recent days, Iran elevated veteran hard-liners to oversee security policy and the state’s coercive institutions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026
Franklin’s ancestors may have emigrated from Europe to escape oppressive rules, but colonial societies were still vastly more coercive and class- ridden than indigenous villages.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
