Synonyms

persuade

American

[per-swayd] / pərˈsweɪd /

verb (used with object)

to prevail on (a person) to do something, as by advising or urging.

We could not persuade him to wait.

Synonyms:

impel, entice, move, influence, urge

Antonyms:

dissuade
to induce to believe by appealing to reason or understanding; convince.

to persuade the judge of the prisoner's innocence.

persuade British

/ pəˈsweɪd /

verb

to induce, urge, or prevail upon successfully

he finally persuaded them to buy it
to cause to believe; convince

even with the evidence, the police were not persuaded

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Usage

See convince.

Synonym Usage

Persuade, induce imply influencing someone's thoughts or actions. They are used today mainly in the sense of winning over a person to a certain course of action: It was I who persuaded him to call a doctor. I induced him to do it. They differ in that persuade suggests appealing more to the reason and understanding: I persuaded him to go back to his wife (although it is often lightly used: Can't I persuade you to stay to supper? ); induce emphasizes only the idea of successful influence, whether achieved by argument or by promise of reward: What can I say that will induce you to stay at your job? Owing to this idea of compensation, induce may be used in reference to the influence of factors as well as of persons: The prospect of a raise in salary was what induced him to stay.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

Inflected Forms

Participles

Conjugated Forms

Present

Past

Future

Etymology

Origin of persuade

From the Latin word persuādēre, dating back to 1505–15. See per-, dissuade, suasion

Explanation

If you get talked into something, you've been persuaded. If your friends try to persuade you to swan-dive into a dangerous ravine, it's time to find some new friends. To persuade is to get your way — win the argument, convince the group to see your favorite movie, get your parents to let you borrow the car. You persuade with language, with a carefully constructed argument, and with the strength of your conviction. The word is sometimes used tongue-in-cheek to describe the very opposite of a carefully worded argument. A movie gangster might "persuade" people with the gun he keeps tucked in his pocket.

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Vocabulary lists containing persuade

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Argumentative Writing

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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.

See Examples For:

persuade persuades persuaded persuading

It was his ability to persuade others to follow without questioning where their journey would end.

From Salon ● Nov. 5, 2026

On Monday and over the weekend, candidates made their final pushes to persuade voters.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2026

On the night of the incident, he tried to persuade her to come out for the evening and when she said no, he convinced her to let him come to her home.

From BBC ● Oct. 31, 2026

But in the end, even being a good mom isn’t enough, on its own, to persuade most rational viewers that Elizabeth Holmes is completely innocent of everything of which she’s been accused.

From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2026

Morgan Stanley had done as much as any Wall Street firm to persuade the rating agencies to treat consumer loans as they treated corporate ones—as assets whose risks could be dramatically reduced if bundled together.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

Most federal criminal cases start when a prosecutor calls one or more witnesses before a grand jury, establishes probable cause, and persuades the grand jury to return an indictment.

From Slate ● Nov. 3, 2026

Fielder persuades Holmes to watch it for the first time, on a laptop in the couple’s bed.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026

When we meet she persuades me to join her in the water telling me she just stays out after heavy rain, which can trigger spills of raw sewage.

From BBC ● May 15, 2026

One aspect of the dollar index being driven back up toward 100 is it persuades Hartnett that rate cuts are less likely.

From MarketWatch ● Mar. 6, 2026

Roza turns on some charm and persuades her to buy a pair of shoes, too.

From "What the Night Sings" by Vesper Stamper

Jauregui said a broker persuaded him to take a new cash advance to help pay off his existing MCA obligations.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026

Mr. Jones suggests that James’s religious upbringing and immersion in medieval thought persuaded him that the dead exist in the spiritual realm, which might at times coincide with material reality.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026

Denise Lee Yohn, a brand leadership expert and author of What Great Brands Do, isn’t persuaded the rebrand has mattered much at all.

From Slate ● Oct. 28, 2026

According to the lawsuit, filed in May, Rosland Capital and Von Detten persuaded the couple to invest more than $2 million of their retirement savings in gold coins worth only $1.3 million.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 21, 2026

“You saw her answer!—you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your doing. You persuaded her to refuse him.”

From "Emma" by Jane Austen

But Spaniards will take a lot of persuading.

From BBC ● Oct. 31, 2026

Interior Secretary Harold Ickes ended the skirmish by imposing a truce and persuading Congress to designate the dam as a federal project.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2026

His most impressive achievement, however, has been persuading people to pay more for his stock than his holdings of Bitcoin are worth.

From Slate ● Sep. 20, 2026

The U.A.E. put years of diplomatic muscle into persuading U.S. officials to sell it top-of-the-line AI chips, ultimately swaying the Trump administration to give it the same access as European countries.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026

The people who had done the persuading saw it as a sales job: They knew there was a difference between corporate and consumer loans that the rating agencies had failed to grapple with.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023