All 12 Uses of
compel
in
The House of the Seven Gables
- How can we elevate our history of retribution for the sin of long ago, when, as one of our most prominent figures, we are compelled to introduce—not a young and lovely woman, nor even the stately remains of beauty, storm-shattered by affliction—but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden, in a long-waisted silk gown, and with the strange horror of a turban on her head!†
Chpt 2compelled = forced; or (more rarely) convinced
- What is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely mingled elements, the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to assume a garb so sordid.†
Chpt 2
- Her hereditary reverence made her afraid to judge the character of the original so harshly as a perception of the truth compelled her to do.†
Chpt 4 *
- There was a fable, however,—for such we choose to consider it, though, not impossibly, typical of Judge Pyncheon's marital deportment,—that the lady got her death-blow in the honeymoon, and never smiled again, because her husband compelled her to serve him with coffee every morning at his bedside, in token of fealty to her liege-lord and master.†
Chpt 8
- The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition.†
Chpt 9
- Twice or thrice, for example, during the sunny hours of the day, a water-cart went along by the Pyncheon House, leaving a broad wake of moistened earth, instead of the white dust that had risen at a lady's lightest footfall; it was like a summer shower, which the city authorities had caught and tamed, and compelled it into the commonest routine of their convenience.†
Chpt 11
- It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried.†
Chpt 12
- I am well aware that my grandfather was compelled to resort to a suit at law, in order to establish his claim to the foundation-site of this edifice.†
Chpt 13
- "You are severe," said Holgrave, compelled to recognize a degree of truth in the piquant sketch of his own mood.†
Chpt 14
- This action, so ill-timed and extravagant,—accompanied, too, with a look that showed more like joy than any other kind of excitement,—compelled Hepzibah to dread that her stern kinsman's ominous visit had driven her poor brother to absolute insanity.†
Chpt 16
- The gloomy and desolate old house, deserted of life, and with awful Death sitting sternly in its solitude, was the emblem of many a human heart, which, nevertheless, is compelled to hear the thrill and echo of the world's gayety around it.†
Chpt 19
- "How can you love a simple girl like me?" asked Phoebe, compelled by his earnestness to speak.†
Chpt 20
Definition:
to force someone to do something
or more rarely:
to convince someone to do something
or more rarely:
to convince someone to do something
Most typically, compel describes an external influence forcing someone to do something, but it can also describe being driven by an internal desire.