How to Use coerce in a Sentence

coerce

verb
Definition of coercenext
Synonyms for coercenext
  • A confession was coerced from the suspect by police.
  • Chekhov, whose plays hardly seem to coerce life at all, boldly broke ranks with this wearying regimentation.
    — The New York Review of Books, 23 May 2019
  • Wynant’s character is coerced into releasing a man imprisoned in a monastery who turns out to be the devil.
    — Nick Thomas, Hartford Courant, 5 Nov. 2024
  • Most of the opposition joined a boycott of the vote, while government workers were coerced to turn out amid reports of fraud.
    — Peter Millard, Bloomberg.com, 16 Feb. 2019
  • Four of the five youths confessed to the crime, but retracted their confessions shortly thereafter, saying they were coerced.
    — Michael Schaub, latimes.com, 6 June 2019
  • That same sentence will remain for anyone found guilty of tricking, pressuring or coercing someone into making the choice if the bill is ultimately passed.
    — David Hodari, NBC News, 29 Nov. 2024
  • An entire generation for ten years were being sent down [writer’s note: Chinese youths were coerced to leave their hometowns to work in rural areas for labor].
    — Destiny Jackson, Deadline, 3 Dec. 2024
  • No forensic evidence tied the teenagers to the crime and prosecutors relied on contradictory confessions that the teenagers said were coerced.
    — New York Times, 6 June 2019
  • Vance also suggested that wealthy parents might go so far as to coerce their children to undergo gender surgeries to get into better colleges and universities.
    — Karissa Waddick, USA TODAY, 1 Nov. 2024
  • The boys have said they were coerced by police to do so.
    — The Washington Post, The Mercury News, 18 June 2019
  • No one is ever forced or coerced to see a show against their will.
    — Scott Galbraith, Orlando Sentinel, 11 July 2024
  • All’s well that ends well, except for the final scene when OA had to face one of the teens that Joseph coerced.
    — Megan Stein, Country Living, 25 Sep. 2019
  • No one should be afraid to speak out or coerced to stay quiet.
    — Abby Gardner, Glamour, 20 Mar. 2018
  • No one should be afraid to speak out or coerced to stay quiet...
    — Houston Chronicle, 30 Mar. 2018
  • The toolkit that China has to use to coerce Taiwan is huge.
    — CBS News, 23 Feb. 2022
  • In our house, money wasn’t used to coerce us to do the right thing, but tasty treats were always fair game.
    — Sari Botton, Longreads, 2 Oct. 2017
  • Kennedy’s case hinged, in part, on whether his players might have felt coerced to join him in prayer.
    — Charles McCrary, The New Republic, 3 Nov. 2023
  • There’s no way to read The Woman in Me and not see that Britney was coerced at every stage.
    — Vulture, 23 Oct. 2023
  • But a great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or to agree with it.
    — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 21 Dec. 2018
  • There was an edge to playing a second time, because we’d been coerced.
    — Rob Tannenbaum, Billboard, 26 May 2017
  • The Spurs coerced James Harden to play more than four quarters Tuesday.
    — Jeff McDonald, ExpressNews.com, 4 Dec. 2019
  • This rig is meant to fall to the bottom, draw the bass’s attention to it along the way and then gently coerce them into biting.
    — Shaye Baker, Field & Stream, 25 May 2023
  • The jurors disagreed on whether the confession could have been coerced.
    — CBS News, 15 Apr. 2018
  • But the company has denied the charge that the Rs750 payment to volunteers was meant to coerce them.
    — Manavi Kapur, Quartz India, 12 Jan. 2021
  • Most of my friends are either supportive or impressed, but there are a few who try to coerce me to drink.
    — Patia Braithwaite, SELF, 22 Aug. 2019
  • Across a vast array of circumstances, a State will be able to impose its moral choice on a woman and coerce her to give birth to a child.
    — Sofia Lotto Persio, Quartz, 24 June 2022
  • In each of the videos, Kim prods and pokes, trying to coerce each sister into flattering words about her weight.
    — Alex Abad-Santos, Vox, 3 Aug. 2018
  • Lawyers for Dassey have argued all along that the confession was coerced and therefore false.
    — Seth Abramovitch, The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Oct. 2019
  • Strong coerced them under the guise that the funny pictures were for the market blog, according to the news release.
    — oregonlive, 23 Nov. 2019
  • Instead of throwing the fight for the mob, Hosseini is coerced to declare forfeit for the glory of Iran.
    — Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter, 22 Oct. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'coerce.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: