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Coerce   Listen
verb
Coerce  v. t.  (past & past part. coerced; pres. part. coercing)  
1.
To restrain by force, especially by law or authority; to repress; to curb. "Punishments are manifold, that they may coerce this profligate sort."
2.
To compel or constrain to any action; as, to coerce a man to vote for a certain candidate.
3.
To compel or enforce; as, to coerce obedience.
Synonyms: To Coerce, Compel. To compel denotes to urge on by force which cannot be resisted. The term aplies equally to physical and moral force; as, compelled by hunger; compelled adverse circumstances; compelled by parental affection. Coerce had at first only the negative sense of checking or restraining by force; as, to coerce a bad man by punishments or a prisoner with fetters. It has now gained a positive sense., viz., that of driving a person into the performance of some act which is required of him by another; as, to coerce a man to sign a contract; to coerce obedience. In this sense (which is now the prevailing one), coerce differs but little from compel, and yet there is a distinction between them. Coercion is usually acomplished by indirect means, as threats and intimidation, physical force being more rarely employed in coercing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Coerce" Quotes from Famous Books



... gift, revocation, and transference of legacies by way of penalty was void. A penal legacy is one given in order to coerce the heir into doing or not doing something; for instance, the following: 'If my heir gives his daughter in marriage to Titius,' or, conversely, 'if he does not give her in marriage to Titius, let him pay ten ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... produced a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was in arms. The power of England was, indeed, as appeared some years later, sufficient to coerce Scotland; but a large part of the English people sympathized with the religious feelings of the insurgents, and many Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars and surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which seemed likely to confound ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... attempt to coerce the maddened young gentleman, but he took a kerchief from his doublet and carefully bound up the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... on my way to Peking. There are three parties—Li Hung Chang (1), the Court (2), the Literary Class (3). The two first are for peace, but dare not say it for fear of the third party. I have told Li that he, in alliance with the Court, must coerce the third party, and have written this to Li and to the Court Party. By so doing I put my head in jeopardy in going to Peking. I do not wish Li to act alone. It is not good he should do anything except support the Court Party morally. God will overrule ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... have been more impolitic. A large force should have been immediately sent to the colonies, to coerce them, before they had time to organize sufficient force to resist the mother country, or conciliatory measures should have been adopted. But the House was angry and infatuated, and the voice of wisdom ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... coerce any one into anything good. We may salve our own conscience by trying to do so, we may even level an immediate difficulty; but a free and generous desire to be different is the only hope of vital change. The detestable Puritan fibre that exists in many of us, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in the ruling classes. The reader of Indian history sickens over details compared with which all that is told of the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta is tame and common-place. The English have prevented repetitions of those outrages on humanity, wherever it has been in their power to coerce the princes. They have pared the claws and drawn the teeth of these human tigers. They have acted humanely; yet it may be doubted if they would not have consulted their own immediate interests more closely, if they had acted the part of tyrants rather than of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... must not love her," he thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is for me stronger ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... unceasingly, soothing his wounded self-esteem, rebuilding stone by stone the temple of his egotism; until at last when Chilcote, panic-stricken at his own action, had burst into his rooms ready to plead or to coerce, he had found no need for either coercion or entreaty. By a power more subtle and effective than any at his command, Loder had been prepared for his coming—unconsciously ready with an acquiescence before his appeal ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... comprehensive of musical instruments we may still be permitted to cherish our piano. Each has its own sphere, its own reason for being. So of the pen,—the piccolo flute of the artistic orchestra. Let it pipe its high treble as merrily as it may, but do not coerce it into mimicking ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... ourselves, but also for everyone else near us; and so if we disapprove of any act, we are always in a hurry to express our disapproval and to try and persuade the actor to our way of thinking. We are for ever thinking of others and trying to improve them; as a nation we try to coerce weaker nations and to convert stronger ones, and as individuals we do the same. We are sure that other people cannot but be better and happier for being brought into our ways of thinking, by force even, if necessary. We ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... ought at least to have spared itself. Either its alleged horror at the advance of central-sovereignty sentiment at the North was sheer pretence, or it should have been certain that this section would not hesitate, as Buchanan so illogically did, to coerce "rebellious" state-bodies. If the North believed the totality of the nation to be the "paramount authority," Lincoln would surely imitate Jackson instead of Buchanan, and in doing so he would not seek military ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... hear me? Go to bed!" He reached, cursing, for his cane. There was a grotesque familiarity in the act. With that very cane he had sought to coerce me into the straight and narrow road, as he conceived it, how many times during all ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... to accomplish their purposes. They might rely upon persuasion and education of their opponents through emotional or intellectual appeals; but such action would have no coercive element in it, so we shall consider it in a later section. Or they might attempt to coerce their opponents, either by violent or non-violent means. For the present we are interested only in the latter through its usual manifestations: the strike, the boycott, or other organized movements ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin

... number of ways is limited in which a multitude of people can act directly upon a situation beyond their reach. Some of them can migrate, in one form or another, they can strike or boycott, they can applaud or hiss. They can by these means occasionally resist what they do not like, or coerce those who obstruct what they desire. But by mass action nothing can be constructed, devised, negotiated, or administered. A public as such, without an organized hierarchy around which it can gather, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... diamonds, which may be subjected to any shock without being crushed. In the fierce fire of their unbridled passions they acquire the most impeccable honesty, and get into the habit of fighting the battles which await genius with the constant work by which they coerce ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac

... that all the proceedings should be certified by the king and other persons as witnesses, in order that at a future time she should be replaced in her proper position. Perhaps, in ordinary circumstances, it would not have been possible for a country priest thus to coerce George III.; but Dr. Wilmot was in possession of a fatal secret. As is well known, King George was publicly married to Princess Charlotte in 1762; but, according to the showing of the petitioners, he ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... according to Mr. Bentham. He says, "All men act from calculation, even madmen reason." And, in our opinion, he might as well carry this maxim to Bedlam or St. Luke's, and apply it to the inhabitants, as think to coerce or overawe the inmates of a gaol, or those whose practices make them candidates for that distinction, by the mere dry, detailed convictions of the understanding. Criminals are not to be influenced by reason; for it is of the very essence of crime ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... be held inviolate, was the answer to the cry from both the North and the South; but armed neutrality, said Kentucky. The State had not the moral right to secede; the Nation, no constitutional right to coerce: if both the North and the South left their paths of duty and fought—let both keep their battles from her soil. Straightway State Guards went into camp and Home Guards were held in reserve, but there was not a fool in the Commonwealth who did not know that, in sympathy, the State Guards ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... Washington by all necessary and constitutional means; but the report of the Senate committee, submitted by Benton, supported the idea that the ratification of the treaty of Indian Springs vested the title to the lands in Georgia, and reached the conclusion that no preparations should be made to coerce the state by military force. In November, 1827, the Creeks consented to a treaty extinguishing the last of their claims, and the ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... to explain your repulse nor sent a polite message by our messengers." Hugh answered simply that he knew the king had taken great trouble about his election, so it was his business to keep the king from spiritual dangers, to coerce the oppressor and to dismiss the covetous nonsuited. It would be useless and stupid to come to court for either matter, for the king's discretion was prompt to notice proper action and quick to approve the right. Hugh was irresistible. The king embraced him, asked for his ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... the shadow of Music Mountain. Nan believed she could at least win her Uncle Duke over from any effort of Gale's to coerce her. Her influence over her uncle had never yet failed, and she was firm in the conviction she could gain him to her side, since he had everything to win and nothing to lose by siding against Gale, whom ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... revenue and generally asserting the rights of government. Co-operating with him was Lumsden with the Guides. Among the recalcitrants was the village of Babuzai, situated in a strong position in the Lundkwar Valley, and Lawrence determined promptly to coerce it. His plan of operation was to send the Guides' infantry by night to work along the hills, so that before daylight they would be occupying the commanding heights behind the village, and thus cut off escape into the mountains. He himself, at dawn, would be in position ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... a word, but she felt quite sure that not even the iron will of the Iron King could ever coerce her into marriage with any man, least of all with the man whose memory was identified with her heart's tragedy. The old man ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... to South Africa in the late autumn, with the hope that his personality would influence the settlement there; and the session of 1903 opened in February with no hint of troubles to come. A difficulty with Venezuela, resulting in British and German co-operation to coerce that refractory republic, caused an explosion of anti-German feeling in England and some restlessness in the United States, but the government brought the crisis to an end by tactful handling and by an ultimate recourse ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... but. Quite right. That is the word by which it is conveniently stated that the mind is not yet clear. Far be it from me to coerce you. I would, if I could, ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... interesting to Mr. Russell, are not felt by pragmatists to constitute exceptions worth considering. Dialectical relations, they will say, are verbal only; that is, they define ideal objects, and certainty in these cases does not coerce existence, or touch contingent fact at all. On the other hand, such apprehension as seizes on some matter of fact, as, for instance, "I feel pain," or "I expected to feel this pain, and it is now verifying ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... agent Conrad Weiser, that if any trader refused to sell the liquor at that price they might "take it from him and drink it for nothing." There was but one way for the French to meet such competition. Without delay they fortified the Allegheny and began to coerce the natives. Driving away the carpenters of the Ohio Company from the present site of Pittsburgh, they built Fort Duquesne. The beginning of the Old French War ended what we may call the first era of ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... a Greek class at the London University. His classical and other reading was probably continued. But we hear nothing in the programme of mathematics, or logic—of any, in short, of those subjects which train, even coerce, the thinking powers, and which were doubly requisite for a nature in which the creative imagination was predominant over all the other mental faculties, great as these other faculties were. And, even as poet, he suffered from this omission: since the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... about the horror of war, and above all the horrors of civil war. You do not know whether the people will support you. You grant that there is some justice in the contention of the South, and you claim for your own case only a balance of truth. You admit that to coerce the millions of the South back into the Union is a kind of task which has never been performed in the world before and one which the wise of all ages have pronounced impossible. And yet, for the sake of a narrow ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... shrunk from a marriage sanctioned by her parents. Eustasius reproached the father for his efforts to violate the solemn obligations of the virgin, and upon obtaining a formal renunciation of further attempts to coerce her into matrimony, the saint, by personal intercession, obtained ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... oath is, quatenus oath, As sound t' all purposes of troth, As broken laws are ne'er the worse; Nay, till th' are broken have no force. 280 What's justice to a man, or laws, That never comes within their claws They have no pow'r, but to admonish: Cannot controul, coerce, or punish, Until they're broken, and then touch 285 Those only that do make 'em such. Beside, no engagement is allow'd By men in prison made for good; For when they're set at liberty, They're from th' engagement too set free. 290 The rabbins write, when any Jew Did make to God, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... I see such argument I will not believe.' But, in fact, every idea vividly before us soon appears to us to be true, unless we keep up our perceptions of the arguments which prove it untrue, and voluntarily coerce our minds to remember its falsehood. 'All clear ideas are true,' was for ages a philosophical maxim, and though no maxim can be more unsound, none can be more exactly conformable to ordinary human nature. The child resolutely accepts every idea which passes through its brain as true; it has no distinct ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... conduct and occasional violent proceedings. Accordingly, a short time preceding that unfortunate conflict, which only smothered for a time the embers of freedom, difficulties arose between Governor Tryon and the Regulators, when that royal official, in order to coerce them into his measures of submission, procured from Charleston, S.C., three wagon loads of the munitions of war, consisting of powder, flints, blankets, &c. These articles were brought to Charlotte, but ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... word more!" she implored. "Listen, Philippe, don't do this thing.... And, if you do not do it, well, I think I could.... Oh, it is horrible to coerce me like this!... Still, I won't have you go.... Listen, Philippe. You know my pride, the bitterness of my feelings and all that I have suffered, all that I am suffering because of Suzanne. Well, I will forget everything. I offer not only to forgive, but to forget. Never a single word shall ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... election of any one to the office of President was not a just cause for dissolving the Union, and while denying that "Secession" could be justified under the Constitution, yet announced his conclusion that the latter had not "delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the Confederacy"; that coercion was "not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress." He did not ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... that such lengthening of one tier will first: coerce present boatman to sacrifice their property, which with boats and equipments, exceeds a valuation of twenty million dollars, or else cut the boats into two parts, and lengthen them (and strengthen their sides and "back-bones") to the full capabilities of the lengthened ...
— History of Steam on the Erie Canal • Anonymous

... entirely proper advice—advice of a completeness which would doubtless have astonished the suitor, then dressing somewhere in a furnished room and unconscious of the publicity of his call. Una also lent Miss Larsen a pair of silk stockings, helped three other girls to coerce her curly hair, and formed part of the solemn procession that escorted her to the top of the stairs when the still unconscious young man was announced from below. And it was Una who was able to see the young man without herself being seen, and to win notoriety by being able ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... led, by your aggressive and turbulent spirit, to form unnecessarily harsh judgments of your character, and put unnecessarily tight thumbscrews on your thumbs; but as for me, I desire to win you by sympathy and affection and physico-theological afternoon parties, not to coerce you by vituperation. Your eye of Reason, as I have often observed, is already sufficiently developed; supplement it with the eye of Faith, and you will be quite complete. It will then only remain for you to learn ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... offer to assist the French. M14 Rome surrenders to the French. M15 Colonel Niel despatched to Gaeta with the keys of the city. M16 Letter of Pius IX. to General Oudinot. M17 General Oudinot repairs to Gaeta and invites the Pope to return to his Capital. M18 The French Republic tries to coerce the Pope.—Letter to Colonel Edgar Ney. M19 Address of Montalembert to the National Assembly of France. M20 The Municipality of Rome invites the Pope to return. M21 The Pope returns to Rome. M22 State of ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... European conflagration. He quickly saw, what Germany would not see, that Russia was so much interested in Servia, for both political and religious reasons, that any attempt by the Austro-Hungarian Government to coerce Servia, to interfere with her territorial integrity or independence as a sovereign state, would inevitably rouse Russia to military action. For Russia had greater interests in the security of Servia than Great ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... Republican campaign, had received great sums of money from the Big Interests, and that he had, indeed, been appointed manager because, from his previous experience as Secretary of the Department of Commerce, he had special information in regard to malefactors of great wealth which would enable him to coerce them to good purpose for the Republican Corruption Fund. President Roosevelt published a letter denying Judge Parker's statements as "unqualifiedly and atrociously false." If Judge Parker's attack had any effect on the election it was to reduce his own votes. Later, Edward H. Harriman, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... his wife stood very erect before him; her eyes did not quail beneath his angry glances; nor was there any sign of weakness in her low, even tones. "Let me warn you now—and regard the warning as for all time—against any attempt to coerce me into obedience to your arbitrary exactions. Your conduct to-night was simply disgraceful—humiliating to yourself, and mortifying and unjust to your wife. Let us have no more of this. There is a high wall between us, ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... in those times who thought and felt as Hawthorne did. Douglas said in the Senate, "Even if you coerce the Southern States and bring them back by force, it will not be the same Union." A people does not necessarily mean a nation; for the idea of nationality is of slow growth, and is in a manner opposed to the idea of democracy; for if the right of ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... Anglo-Saxon should rush from starvation and persecution, to a freer home across the seas. No sooner had he found it, than the old oppression might again be clanking its chains at his heels. The stern Mother more than once stretched out her hand to coerce her freer children, forcing them ever to take new ground, and be, so to speak, clear of her clutches. The instance of America occurred during this second stage in the weft and woof of tribulation which was at the root of our growth. The same with the Boers of South Africa, who, by harsh regulations, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... The Seminoles of Florida naturally objected to removal from the land of their ancestors to a far-distant region, and under the leadership of a brave and skillful chief named Osceola they resisted the troops sent to coerce them into obedience. The most memorable event of the war was the massacre of Major Dade and about one hundred soldiers in an ambuscade, December 28, 1835. On the same day Osceola with a small party of followers killed and scalped ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... their way to the front; if anything were done with them, it would be by force! If anything were done with Percy, it would be by laying hold of him before these guests, exposing the situation, and using their feelings to coerce him! ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... man; and the misfortune of always having the border districts in a state of excitement and alarm, would be avoided, whilst the expense and inconvenience of occasionally sending large parties of military and police, to coerce or punish transgressors that they can rarely meet with, would ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... gradual operation all the civilization which had been gained insensibly faded away, until the empire, which had conquered and embraced the world in its grasp so completely lost even its military efficiency that invaders whom three or four legions had always sufficed to coerce were able to overrun and occupy nearly the whole of its vast territory. The fresh impulse given by Christianity came but just in time to save arts and letters from perishing, and the human race from sinking back into perhaps ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... has not been spared, for human life in the Congo is as dust in the balance when weighed against the profits from rubber. Punitive expeditions have been organized (in other words, wholesale slaughter has been resorted to), in order to coerce the reluctant natives to bring in their supplies more punctually. The wives and daughters of the natives have been seized, brutally chained, and detained as hostages in order to influence their husbands and fathers to a more ready obedience. The story of the Congo reads like ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... hardly be counted among the bread-winning occupations. But if a woman thinks she can be satisfied to work regularly on a newspaper or a magazine she may often earn a large income. If money or fame is her object she must always sign her own name to everything she writes, as it takes genius to coerce the public into ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... antecedent necessity to Mr. Mill are one and the same. But Law in Catholic terminology means the Will of God decreeing freely or not freely, according to the subject-matter; and is not opposed to Free-Will. It guides, it need not coerce or necessitate, though it may. Neither in one sense, is Law synonymous with Reason, for that is according to Reason, simply, which does not involve a contradiction, whether it be done freely or ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... may be sure, my dear girls, that wild horses will not drag the fact from me in the presence of the dragon, even if I am weary unto death. Does she coerce all her boarders as ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... mass, room was given for attempts to reinstate it on Evangelical territory; by the other decision respecting the subjects of different States, power was given to the bishops of the German Empire to coerce, if they chose, the local clergy, as their subordinates. Further steps in the exercise of this power could ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... the advisability of a separate secession by that financial centre from Nation and State alike—and of setting up as a "free town." Seward, just appointed Secretary of State, was repudiating in both official and private talk any intention to coerce the South by force of arms[134]. It is no wonder that British statesmen were largely at ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... with blood; oppress, override; trample under foot; tread under foot, tread upon, trample upon, tread down upon, trample down upon; crush under an iron heel, ride roughshod over; rivet the yoke; hold a tight hand, keep a tight hand; force down the throat; coerce &c. 744; give no quarter &c. (pitiless) 914a. Adj. severe; strict, hard, harsh, dour, rigid, stiff, stern, rigorous, uncompromising, exacting, exigent, exigeant[obs3], inexorable, inflexible, obdurate, austere, hard-headed, hard-nosed, hard-shell [U.S.], relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... eloquent passage about our friendly Colonies, "overarched by zodiacs and stars, clasped by many-sounding seas." Carlyle would apparently force emigration, and coerce the Australians, Americans, and Chinese, to receive our ship-loads of living merchandise; but the problem of population exceeds his solution of it. He everywhere inclines to rely on coercion till it ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... from which she had suffered. Mrs. Whately was quick to see the apparent weakness in his argument, for she said, "Consistency is a jewel which I suppose is little cared for by those so ready to appeal to force. With one breath you say we must not coerce the wills of others, and now you say you would, even though you did violence to universal and ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... side of the Skelton Beck, and almost hide the modern mansion. The buildings include part of the ancient castle of the Bruces, who were Lords of Skelton for many years. It is recorded that Peter de Brus, one of the barons who helped to coerce John into signing the Great Charter at Runnymede, made a curious stipulation when he granted some lands at Leconfield to Henry Percy, his sister's husband. The property was to be held on condition ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... if you like," he uttered, in his rather strident voice; "but as to condemning him, I would as soon condemn a tadpole for not being a full-grown frog. His soul is beyond his power to manage, or even to coerce, you may ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... here who, now that I have explained that Professor Frazer leaves us of his own free will, still persist in their stubborn desire to create trouble, and still feel that the faculty have not treated Professor Frazer properly, or that we have endeavored to coerce him, then let them stand up, right here and now, in chapel. I mean it! Let them stop this cowardly running to and fro and secret gossip. Let them stand right up before us, in token of protest, here—and—now! or otherwise ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... 'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' The traveller in the old fable gathered his cloak around him all the more closely, and held it the more tightly, because of the tempest that blew, but when the warm sunbeams fell he dropped it. He that would coerce my will, stiffens it into rebellion; but when a beloved one says, 'Though I might be much bold to enjoin thee, yet for love's sake I rather beseech,' then yielding is blessedness, and the giving ourselves away is the finding of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... easy to deceive, he was wonderful. He seemed to be a clean-natured boy, but what he did and did not know it would have been hard to say, as, added to a certain secretiveness which in different ways both Phoebe and Ishmael possessed, there was in him a strain of elusiveness; you could not coerce him to a definiteness he did not wish any more than you could catch a butterfly by stabbing at it in air with ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... a felon during his term of transportation,' and to show the futility of a prison system loosely planned at one end of the world and roughly executed at the other by men who found it easier, and in some cases more agreeable, to their undiscerning hearts to coerce ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... laid on his doorstep. His thoughts had been otherwise occupied, but the moment his eyes fell on the shepherd's-plaid shawl wrapping the bundle at his feet, he knew what it was, and recognised a renewed attempt to coerce him into doing what he had vowed he would not. He saw it all in a minute, and understood that now Jane Sands was in the plot against him, and she had devised this way of putting the child in his path because she was afraid to come ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... the squalid street at the end of which stands Springer's. In the sunshine of the mild March morning the facade of the tall buff building looked for all the world like a gaunt, ugly, unkempt hag, frowning between bleared old eyes that seemed to coax—nay, rather to coerce me into ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... greater number. Besides, in some of these cases, a majority of the stockholders might not sit idly by, and see the bank deprived of its share of government favour by the squeamishness of its officers, and might therefore either coerce them into compliance, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... seen Hayes argue with a tough horse—I have seen a tonga-driver coerce a stubborn pony—I have seen a riotous setter broken to gun by a hard keeper— but the breaking-in of Pluffles of the "Unmentionables" was beyond all these. He learned to fetch and carry like a dog, and to wait like one, too, for a word from Mrs. Reiver. He learned to keep ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... before. The excesses of monarchical power had devised a variety of political means of oppression; the democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind, as that will which it is intended to coerce. Under the absolute sway of an individual despot, the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul; and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it, and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... commands, are not permitted to have interviews with outside barbarians." While the Chinese officials had been both consistent and successful, the new English superintendent of trade had been both inconsistent and discomfited. He had attempted to carry matters with a high hand and to coerce the mandarins, and he was compelled to show in the most public manner that he had failed by his retirement to Macao. He had even imperiled the continuance of the trade which he had come specially to promote, and all he could do to show his indignation was to make a futile ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... the habits and character of the humbler class, that he was able, by cajolery or intimidation, to coerce them, when on the table, into truth-telling. He was once examining a witness, whose inebriety, at the time to which the evidence referred, it was essential to his client's case to prove. He quickly discovered ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... "You shall not coerce me as if I were your very slave!" she said, smiting her little hands together and pushing him from her, forgetting in her great anger whether or not her action accorded well with her dignity. "They cheered me, and I shall respond!" and before he could utter one word of protest she ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... not agree with you, Tier," said Rose, though she looked as amicably at the steward's assistant, as she thus opposed his opinion, as if anxious to persuade rather than coerce. "I do not quite agree with you. This money belongs to the Spanish merchant; and, as we take away with us his vessel, to give it up to the authorities at Key West, I do not think we have a right to put his gold on the shore ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... replied, "There is the Shameer, with which Moses cut the precious stones of the Ephod." Solomon asked, "And where, pray, is the Shameer to be found?" To which they made answer, "Let a male demon and a female come, and do thou coerce them both; mayhap they know and will reveal it to thee." He then conjured into his presence a male and a female demon, and proceeded to torture them, but in vain, for said they, "We know not its whereabouts and cannot tell; perhaps Ashmedai, the king of the demons, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... that it is wise to limit our independence of action, a sovereign right, to the will of other powers beyond this hemisphere. In any representative international body clothed with authority to require of the nations to employ their armies and navies to coerce one of their number, we would be in the minority. I do not believe that we should put ourselves in the position of being compelled to send our armed forces to Europe or Asia or, in the alternative, of ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... doing its utmost to produce duplicates. The native tendencies of one boy impel him toward the realms of nature, but, all heedless of this big fact, we bind him hard and fast to some academic post with traditional bonds of rules and regulations and then strive to coerce him into partaking of our traditional pabulum. His inevitable rebellion against this regime we style incorrigibility, or stupidity, and then by main strength and authority strive to reduce him to submission and, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... would survive much greater misfortune than separation from a man who is unworthy of you. I cannot coerce, but simply counsel you in this matter, and should be glad to learn what your own decision is. Do you intend to wait until Gerard Granville explicitly requests you to release ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... and looking in vain, for a victory over heresy in England. Vast in fact as Philip's resources were, they were drained by the yet vaster schemes of ambition into which his religion and his greed of power, as well as the wide distribution of his dominions, perpetually drew him. To coerce the weaker States of Italy, to command the Mediterranean, to keep a hold on the African coast, to preserve his influence in Germany, to support Catholicism in France, to crush heresy in Flanders, to despatch one Armada against the Turk and another against England, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... punishment is not sufficient to deter a man from sin, a double punishment must be inflicted. Wherefore it was necessary to inflict some kind of temporal punishment in addition to the punishment of excommunication, in order to coerce those ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... the State of South Carolina, her constituted authorities or citizens, or any act abolishing or closing the ports of this State, or any of them, or otherwise obstructing the free ingress and egress of vessels to and from the said ports, or any other act on the part of the Federal Government to coerce the State, shut up her ports, destroy or harass her commerce, or to enforce the acts hereby declared to be null and void, otherwise than through the civil tribunals of the country, as inconsistent with ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... counties, the principle of legislation for sovereign States, supported by military coercion, has never been found effectual. It has rarely been attempted to be employed, but against the weaker members; and in most instances attempts to coerce the refractory and disobedient have been the signals of bloody wars, in which one half of the confederacy has displayed its banners against ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... been busily garnering from the great world ever since the day when his eyes first focussed and he drew, startled, against the warm breast of his mother—the tyranny of these he cannot shake off. Servants of his will, they at the same time master him. They may not coerce genius, but they dictate and sway every action of the clay-born. If he hesitate on the verge of a new departure, they whip him back into the well-greased groove; if he pause, bewildered, at sight of some unexplored domain, they ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... clever and agreeable. She is a highly patriotic Southerner; but she told me that she had stuck fast to the Union until Lincoln's proclamation calling out 75,000 men to coerce the South, which converted her and such a number of others into strong Secessionists. I spent a very pleasant evening with Mrs S——, who had been much in England, and had made ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... changed it, he asserts, in large and notorious cases. Well, then, if they have, then at once falls to the ground this alleged overruling coercion a priori of the climate and the desert. Climate and desert do not necessarily coerce them, if in large and notorious cases they have failed to do so. So feels Gibbon; and, by an instinct of timidity, back he flies to the previous evasion—to the natural controlling power of climate and soil, admitting the Scriptural fact, but seeking for ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... from any measures of coercion. About this time also, viz., early in December, we received Mr. Buchanan's annual message to Congress, in which he publicly announced that the General Government had no constitutional power to "coerce a State." I confess this staggered me, and I feared that the prophecies and assertions of Alison and other European commentators on our form of government were right, and that our Constitution was a mere rope of sand, that would break with ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Rights are not all told. While the ordinances of Secession were maturing, and before they were yet consummated, Mr. Buchanan, who was then President, declined to interfere, on the ground that what had been done was done by States, and that it was contrary to the theory of our government "to coerce a State." Thus was the pretension of State Rights made the apology for imbecility. Had this President then interfered promptly and loyally, it cannot be doubted that this whole intolerable crime might have been trampled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... seen, had hostilities taken an other direction, place a perpetual gag in the mouths of all scoffers. The child is passing from the gristle into the bone, and the next generation will not even laugh, as does the present, at any idle and ill-considered menaces to coerce this republic; strong in the consciousness of its own power, it will eat all such fanfaronades, if any future statesman should be so ill-advised as to ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... appeared upon the scene. Now this was just one of the little dramas that it so amused Pansey Cottrell occasionally to exercise his influence in. I do not mean to say that he would interfere to such an extent as to either make or mar the wedding; but to take part with the conspirators and coerce Lady Mary into going to this Commonstone ball was a bit of mischief quite in his way. He could not resist the temptation of teasing his fellow-creatures, and what gave such particular zest to such tormenting was that his victims ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... to coerce you," she retorted, "but my daughter will obey me, and she will refuse your hand. I don't care if you are fifty times Lord Caranby. Juliet should not marry you if you had all the money in the world. I hated Walter Mallow, your uncle. He treated me shamefully, ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... leave upon the Emperor the impression that you would sell your invention. Had I not done so he certainly would have demanded the reasons for your presence in Berlin, and had I dared to suggest that you had been sent by the United States to coerce him he would have been thrown into such a rage that he might have declared war on your country, which I understand is the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... have it now determined that for all future time any State, or any cluster of States, that may attempt to coerce or bully a legal and constitutional majority by the threat of secession, shall be met with the answer: "You don't go out of this Union unless you are strong enough to fight your way out." I want to have the armed heel of the country crush the serpent head ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... internal affairs of the country; and though the freedom of their deliberations was impeded by the presence of the wayvodes or military governors, at the head of their armed retainers, whom even the authority of Kara George was unable to coerce, the success of their efforts to establish schools and promote the interests of civilization, indicated a degree of enlightened policy little to have been expected from a people but half emancipated from Turkish bondage. Kara George, meanwhile, who had received from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... than passion) has gone. Should love ever be other than perfectly free, and is not the attempt to bind it essentially "immoral"? Should it ever be exclusive or proprietary? Is not the "moral problem" really created, not by human nature, but by the attempt to bind what cannot be bound and to coerce ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... together, we two old people and the children of the children whom Hades rent from us? We need only to grow old to perceive that life has a head with many faces. The ugly one of to-day can last no longer than you can keep that deeply furrowed brow. But you need not coerce yourself for my sake, husband. Let it be so. I need merely close my eyes to see how smooth and beautiful it was in youth, and how pleasant it will look when better days ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... was an immediate march of the Army upon London, to occupy the city and coerce Parliament. With no wish to resort to such a policy so long as it could be avoided, the Army-leaders, for a time, kept moving their head-quarters from spot to spot in the counties north and west of London, now approaching the city and again receding, and paying but slight respect to the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... his grip! The illusion died hard. Throughout 1862, and even in 1863, the newspapers published appeals to the planters to give up growing cotton for a time, and even to destroy what they had, so as to coerce the obdurate Englishmen. ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... tyranny. And probably nothing short of revelation from Heaven, in shape of blinding light, would ever open their eyes to the fact that it is even more selfish to hold a generous spirit fettered hour by hour by a constant fear of giving pain than to coerce or threaten or scold them into the desired behavior. Invalids, all invalids, stand in deadly peril of becoming tyrants of this order. A chronic invalid who entirely escapes it must be so nearly saint or angel that one instinctively feels as if their invalidism would ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... destroys one's enemies and guards one against plots of enemies, including other magicians; he is able to induce or destroy love, to give physical strength, to inflict disease, to kill, and to restore to life; he ascends to heaven or descends into the world below; he is able to coerce the gods themselves; in fact, he does everything that a god is commonly supposed to do—the tendency was to identify the magician and the god.[1572] Such identification is natural or necessary in early faiths, inasmuch as ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... supreme in England. Burke joined this party, but afterwards deserted it, or rather broke it up, when he perceived its arbitrary character, and its disregard of the fundamental principles of the Constitution. He was able to do this after its unsuccessful attempt to coerce the American colonies. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... my weapon to coerce the untamed rebelliousness of the monks, I forced certain ones among them whom I particularly feared to promise me publicly, pledging their faith or swearing upon the sacrament, that they would thereafter depart from the abbey and no longer trouble me in any ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard

... difficult for Sir Oliver to see his way all in a moment. To oppose this scheme or to submit to it appeared alike dangerous. His independence and honest English pride revolted against any attempt to coerce him in his domestic arrangements, or to submit to interference there, even from the ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... being from her childhood the one embodiment her life presented to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind and power to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was secured. She was twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he brought her home to the gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... of their means of livelihood, and would drive ten thousand more into other vocations. But the power of the ministry forced the bills through, though twenty-one peers joined in a solemn protest. "We dissent," said they, "because the attempt to coerce, by famine, the whole body of the inhabitants of great and populous provinces, is without example in the history of this, or, perhaps, of any civilized nations." This was in 1775, and the revolution ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... leave the Jews—the racial instinct was strong in him, and the pride of his people colored his character to the last. But the attempts to bribe him and coerce him into a following of fanatical law, when this law did not appeal to his commonsense, forced him into a position that his enemies took for innate perversity. When an eagle is hatched in a barnyard brood and mounts on soaring pinions toward the sun, it is always cursed and vilified ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... split, except that they had of course no general control over the industry. They had, however, meetings, officers, feasts, and charitable funds. In addition to these functions there is reason to believe that they made use of their organization to influence the rate of wages and to coerce other journeymen. Their relations to the masters' companies were frequently defined by regular written agreements between the two parties. Journeymen gilds existed among the saddlers, cordwainers, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... expression which Blackall's countenance bore after the event I have just described. When any of his associates talked to him about fagging, he frowned, and, putting out his lips, declared that there was no use attempting to coerce the young scamps, for that the advantage to be gained was not worth the trouble it would cost. This was very true, but at the same time it was not an opinion anybody would have expected from him. Whenever he met Bracebridge, he always looked at him with an expression of intense dislike, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... will not quarrel over the matter, Ruth," she said, in a conciliatory tone. "Of course I have no right to coerce you in such a matter, and you are too useful to me to be driven away by contesting the point. So we will drop the subject; and now if you will take this memorandum and go about the shopping I shall be obliged to you. I shall need all my strength for this evening, because I am to have ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... city increased rapidly the price of grain, and augmented the alarm of the people, who began to urge the magistrate to listen to their prayers, and coerce the sordid corn- dealers, who had, no doubt, numerous pits yet unopened. The alarm became still greater in the cantonments, where the commanding officer attributed all the evil to the inefficiency of the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... not actually terrify Oscar, were at least the sort of people he could not control, and whom he feared as possibly able to coerce him. You suggest that the Queensberry pugnacity was something that Oscar could not deal with successfully. But how in that case could Oscar have felt quite safe with you? You were more pugnacious than six Queensberrys ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... chose to preserve at all cost. But the authors of the statutes did not see the matter in this light. They could not lose such an opportunity of inflicting new tortures on their victims; on the contrary, they would have considered all their labor lost had they not endeavored to coerce the very thing least subject to coercion, the religious feeling of the human soul. Accordingly, the resolution was taken to deprive them of every possible facility for the exercise of their religion, that the fire within might give no ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... ought to be a hope to us all. Are you glad when you think that there is a day of judgment coming? Does your heart leap up when you realise the fact that the righteousness, which is in the heavens, is sure to conquer and coerce and secure under the hatches the sin that is riding rampant through the world? It was a joy and a hope to men who did not know half as much of the divine love and the divine righteousness as we do. They called upon the rocks and the hills to rejoice, and the trees of the forest to clap ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... which he longed to wear, and knew that he could not—not yet. He could have coerced a lower being, but for his manhood's sake—he had risen to that now, it is curious how the dignity of fatherhood helps to make a man—he could not coerce here, and if he did, he knew that the product would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Immortal Five, but this fact remains: none that we know have. Great men, so-called, are usually specialists: clever actors, individuals with a knack, talented comedians—who preach, carve, paint, orate, fight, manipulate, manage, teach, write, perform, coerce, bribe, hypnotize, accomplish, and get results. There are great financiers, sea-captains, mathematicians, football players, engineers, bishops, wrestlers, runners, boxers, and players on zithern-strings. But these are not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... to be openly recognized by the Constitution, and spread over the nation. The President of the United States, a Northern Democrat, gravely declared that there existed no right in the Government to coerce a seceding State, which was all that the most determined Secessionist could ask. Instead of doing anything to strengthen the position of the federal Government, the President did all that he could to assist the Secessionists, and left the country naked to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... exploits most successfully are precisely those of which it does not "own" a foot. Even with the most characteristically colonial of all—Great Britain—the greater part of her overseas trade is done with countries which she makes no attempt to "own," control, coerce, or dominate—and incidentally she has ceased to do any of these things with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... little care we can prevent matters going as far as knives. I have always found the people of this district easy to get on with, if they are reasonably treated. Of course, if you once begin to threaten or coerce a Romagnol he becomes unmanageable. But have you any reason for supposing a ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... Hallowell interposed, as he drove up with the stage, "what kind of free principles be you preachin'? You'd ought to know better'n coerce." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the Treasonable Practices Bill. Declaring the planning or levying war within the kingdom to be an act of substantive treason, it imposed dire penalties on those who devised evil against the King, who sought to coerce Parliament or help the invaders. Even those who spoke or wrote against the constitution came under the penalties for treason and might be transported for seven years. As Fox indignantly exclaimed, if he criticized a system which allotted ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... the mind as it is greater than the body. Would you have proof? Recall the days of the martyrs. What is it in man that can take the body and hold it in the fire until the flames consume the quivering flesh? The soul of man that can coerce the body to its death is greater than the body itself. And the soul is likewise greater than the mind. It can take the imperial mind of man, purge it of vanity and egotism and infuse into it the spirit ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... moderation than the others. The divines of Geneva stated, that, "if a person obstinately refused to submit to the just decisions of the church, he might be proceeded against in two ways; the magistrate might coerce him, and the church might publicly excommunicate him as a violator of the ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... 'vanitas vanitatum,' upon the tombstone of my departed youth—my day of beaux and offers. You may shake your head and look heroic with all your might! You are no better off than I, should your brother see cause to refuse his consent to your marriage with Mr. Chilton. He could, and probably would, coerce you into another alliance before you were twenty-one. There are so many ways of letting the life out of a woman's heart, when it is already faint from disappointment! The spirit is oftener broken by unyielding, but not seemingly cruel pressure, than by outrageous violence. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... of France will assuredly give no efficient aid to the Stuarts. He has all along used them as puppets, by whose means he can, when he chooses, annoy or coerce England. But I have no belief that he will render any useful aid, ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... careful, Clara Day! I come to you armed with the authority of your legal guardian, my father, Colonel Le Noir, who will forestall your foolish purpose of throwing yourself and your fortune away upon a beggar, even though to do so he strain his authority and coerce you into taking a more suitable companion," said Craven Le Noir, rising impatiently and pacing the floor. But no sooner had he spoken these words than he saw how greatly he had injured his cause and repented them. Going to Clara and intercepting her as ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... present carries with him more vital energy than his predecessors, is more athletic in his struggles with the unlucky wights he visits, and can coerce mortals to do his will by the laying on of hands as well as by the look or word. He speaks with more emphasis and authority, as well as with more human naturalness, than the earlier ghosts. He has not only all the force ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... of private feuds, which abounded ad libitum. Neighboring potentates, Archbishop of Magdeburg and others, struck in also at discretion, as they had gradually got accustomed to do, and snapped away some convenient bit of territory, or, more legitimately, they came across to coerce, at their own hand, this or the other Edle Herr of the Turpin sort, whom there was no other way of getting at, when he carried matters quite too high. "Droves of six hundred swine"—I have seen (by reading in those ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... of policy at home, it would appear that the efforts of commanders should be, to induce the tribesmen to assume the offensive. On this point I must limit my remarks to the flat-bottomed valleys of Swat and Bajaur. To coerce a tribe like the Mamunds, a mixed brigade might camp at the entrance to the valley, and as at Inayat Kila, entrench itself very strongly. The squadron of cavalry could patrol the valley daily in complete security, as the tribesmen would not dare to leave the hills. ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... discontented and estranged, nothing can save it from disintegration. I do not suppose that a navy ten times larger than ours, or conscription of the most irksome thoroughness, could oblige Canada to remain in the Empire if the general will and feeling of Canada were against it, or coerce India into a sustained submission if India presented a united and resistant front. Our Empire, for all its roll of battles, was not created by force; colonisation and diplomacy have played a far larger share ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... you should coerce her, as you put it. I merely meant that you could point out to her, as a father, where ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... an investigation was ruled to be civil in character on the ground that the only sanction was a penalty designed to compel obedience. The Court then enunciated the principle that where a fine or imprisonment imposed on the contemnor is designed to coerce him to do what he has refused to do, the proceeding is ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... others, for a far less bitter thwarting of the will of the Signoria, had suffered death—which had been hinted to him. He had meant to offer this as his supreme argument when all others had failed to coerce her: but instinctively he held it back, fearing to anger her to the point of stubborn refusal, for there was some unexpected power of resistance within the ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... to be conscription, let it be enforced all round, but it seems to be the very intensity of injustice to leave English shirkers by the million to go free, and coerce the small remnant of the Irish race into a war which they do not understand, and which, whether it is right or wrong, has but a secondary and indirect interest ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... in knowledge must accordingly be, in ordinary cases, slow, and the cultivation of moral principle must be, in such a case, entirely neglected. The principles of duty cannot be inculcated by fear; and though pain and terror must, in many instances, be called in to coerce an individual offender, whom milder measures will not reach, yet these agents, and others like them, can never be successfully employed, as the ordinary motives to action. They cannot produce any thing but mere external and heartless obedience in the presence of the teacher, with ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it. That right to decide imposes upon her the duty of clearing the way to knowledge by which she may make and ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... the directors in the Tribunal Hall some minutes later, "is then this. There has been nothing haphazard about the Mars Convicts' plan to coerce us into accepting their terms. Considering the probable quality of the type of minds which developed both the stardrive and the extraordinary 'philosophy' we have encountered today, that could be taken for granted from the start. We cannot kill their emissary here, or subject him to serious ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz

... his purpose, resolved to coerce Parliament by military force. He left London in 1642, never to return until he came as a prisoner, and was delivered into the custody of that legislative body that he had insulted and defied. Parliament now attempted to come to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery



Words linked to "Coerce" :   squeeze for, force, bludgeon, coercion, compel, terrorize, turn up the heat, steamroll, pressure, drive, sandbag, turn up the pressure, terrorise, railroad, move, steamroller, hale



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