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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
coerce
verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Officials coerced peasants into voting for the government candidates.
▪ Ray withdrew his confession, saying that he had been coerced by the police.
▪ The company paid the workers the minimum rate of $4.86 an hour, but coerced some to give back half their pay in cash.
▪ The mine owners coerced the workers into going back to work, by threatening to close down the mines completely.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And yet woman is coerced through submission to the Symbolic order to abandon feminine desire and a peculiarly feminine relation to origins.
▪ Both firms and workers are being coerced by the same forcemajeure of insufficient demand in the commodity market.
▪ In many cases, young women are coerced or bribed into relationships with older men.
▪ She hadn't coerced him in any way.
▪ They may assert, for instance, that crucial evidence was covered up or a confession was coerced.
▪ This gives the workforce both a much greater capacity to coerce management and a consciousness of its collective power, claims Mallet.
▪ Three days later, Ray asked to withdraw his plea, claiming it had been coerced.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Coerce

Coerce \Co*erce"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Coerced; p. pr. & vb. n. Coercing.] [L. co["e]rcere; co- + arcere to shut up, to press together. See Ark.]

  1. To restrain by force, especially by law or authority; to repress; to curb.
    --Burke.

    Punishments are manifold, that they may coerce this profligate sort.
    --Ayliffe.

  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.

    Syn: To Coerce, Compel.

    Usage: 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.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
coerce

mid-15c., cohercen, from Middle French cohercer, from Latin coercere "to control, restrain, shut up together," from com- "together" (see co-) + arcere "to enclose, confine, contain, ward off," from PIE *ark- "to hold, contain, guard" (see arcane). Related: Coerced; coercing. No record of the word between late 15c. and mid-17c.; its reappearance 1650s is perhaps a back-formation from coercion.

Wiktionary
coerce

vb. 1 To restrain by force, especially by law or authority; to repress; to curb. 2 (context transitive English) to use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in attempt to compel one to act against his will. 3 (context transitive computing English) to force an attribute, normally of a data type, to take on the attribute of another data type.

WordNet
coerce

v. to cause to do through pressure or necessity, by physical, moral or intellectual means :"She forced him to take a job in the city"; "He squeezed her for information" [syn: hale, squeeze, pressure, force]

Wikipedia
Coerce (band)

Coerce is a post-hardcore band originally from Adelaide, South Australia and now reside in Melbourne, Victoria. In 2009 Coerce released their debut album Silver Tongued Life Licker and were a Triple J Next Crop artist. The band released a split album with Robotosaurus in 2010. Their second album, Ethereal Surrogate Saviour, that was nominated for a 2011 ARIA Award for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album.

Usage examples of "coerce".

Meanwhile he had his half-dozen blunderheads to coach, Bullard among them, and perhaps no one was more surprised than Bullard when he discovered that the little man could coerce and persuade.

It is upon the ground that a State can not be coerced that observance of the compact is a sacred obligation.

Save, perhaps, that he was a boy, coerced and cornered by circumstance.

There is simply chemistry, and its truth is not forced or coerced or ideologically imposed, but is freely open to any who wish to look into its reasons.

Windham had coerced her into doing the one thing Morgan could never forgive.

Sarah could read his changing expressions as he decided not to attempt to exert his masculine authority over her now, before he had wooed or coerced her into becoming his wife.

Other administration officials would assure the press that we have not yet made a decision to invade and that the buildup of forces is intended to give the president a range of options, from coercing Saddam to comply with a new containment regime up to and including an invasion if that became necessary.

Buchanan, the last President of the old school, would as soon have thought of aiding in the establishment of a monarchy among us as of accepting the doctrine of coercing the States into submission to the will of a majority, in mass, of the people of the United States.

How this effort was received, how the Commissioners were kept waiting, and, while fair promises were held to the ear, how military preparations were pushed forward for the unconstitutional, criminal purpose of coercing States, let the shameful record of that transaction attest.

Both refused to furnish troops to the United States Government for the unconstitutional purpose of coercing the Southern States.

State, which forty years before had been admitted to the Union, against sectional resistance to the right guaranteed by the Constitution, and specifically denominated in the treaty for the acquisition of Louisiana, now, because her Governor refused to furnish troops for the unconstitutional purpose of coercing States, became the subject of special hostility and the object of extraordinary efforts for her subjugation.

A hard worker with a knack for persuading or coercing those who worked under him into being the same, he had been made overseer within a year.

He stated that he was coerced, forced to confess to the crimes, and possibly drugged before entering a plea of guilty.

Wentworth had used the threat of the gallows to coerce him into fighting this bloody war, the MacKinnon name had lain under a shadow, and the farm had languished in neglect.

I neither swaggered nor skulked, but went from cell to dining hall to my prison job with the unhurried deliberation of an ordinary man engaged upon his daily business, and I resisted, thanks to my hostility toward every sort of authority, therapy sessions designed to turn me inward, to coerce an analysis of the family difficulties and street pressures that had nourished my criminality, with the idea of liberating me from my past.