enforce

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   To keep up, impose or bring into effect something, not necessarily by force.

   • The police are there to enforce the law.
   • 1929, Chiang Kai-shek, quoted in “Nationalist Notes,” Time, 11 February, 1929, Our task is only half finished. It will be my duty to enforce the decisions of the conference and I hereby pledge myself to that end.
   • Far from needing to be repealed, the ban on politics in the pulpit ought to be enforced more aggressively.
2. 2

   To give strength or force to

   To give strength or force to; to affirm, to emphasize.

   • The victim was able to enforce his evidence against the alleged perpetrator.
3. 3

   To strengthen (a castle, town etc.) with extra troops, fortifications etc.

4. ›+ 8 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      To intensify, make stronger, add force to.

   2. 5

      To exert oneself, to try hard.

      • I pray you enforce youreselff at that justis that ye may be beste, for my love.
   3. 6

      To compel, oblige (someone or something)

      To compel, oblige (someone or something); to force.

      • Sweete prince I come, these these thy amorous lines, / Might haue enforst me to haue swum from France, / And like Leander gaspt vpon the sande, / So thou wouldst smile and take me in thy armes.
      • Uladislaus the Second, King of Poland, and Peter Dunnius, Earl of Shrine[…]had been hunting late, and were enforced to lodge in a poor cottage.
      • In a few minutes I was stealthily groping my way down my own staircase, with a box of matches in my hand, enforced by scientific curiosity, but none the less armed with a stick.
   4. 7

      To make or gain by force

      To make or gain by force; to force.

      • to enforce a passage
      • Ne shame he thought to shonne so hideous might, / The ydle stroke, enforcing furious way, / Missing the marke of his misaymed sight / Did fall to ground […]
   5. 8

      To put in motion or action by violence

      To put in motion or action by violence; to drive.

      • Auster and Aquilon with winged Steeds All ſweating, tilt about the watery heauens, With ſhiuering ſpeares enforcing thunderclaps, And from their ſhields ſtrike flames of lightening
      • If they’ll do neither, we will come to them, / And make them skirr away, as swift as stones / Enforced from the old Assyrian slings:
   6. 9

      To give force to

      To give force to; to strengthen; to invigorate; to energize.

      • to enforce arguments or requests
      • [T]he eloquence of the declaration, not contradicting, but enforcing sentiments of the truest humanity, has left stings that have penetrated more than skin-deep into my mind […]
   7. 10

      To urge

      To urge; to ply hard; to lay much stress upon.

      • In this point charge him home, that he affects / Tyrannical power: if he evade us there, / Enforce him with his envy to the people, / And that the spoil got on the Antiates / Was ne’er distributed.
   8. 11

      To prove

      To prove; to evince.

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