FORCE

I. noun Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Vulgar Latin *fortia, from Latin fortis strong Date: 14th century 1. a. strength or energy exerted or brought to bear ; cause of motion or change ; active power , (2) capitalized — used with a number to indicate the strength of the wind according to the Beaufort scale moral or mental strength, capacity to persuade or convince , 2. military strength, b. a body (as of troops or ships) assigned to a military purpose, the whole military strength (as of a nation), a body of persons or things available for a particular end , an individual or group having the power of effective action , police ~ , violence, compulsion, or constraint exerted upon or against a person or thing, 4. an agency or influence that if applied to a free body results chiefly in an acceleration of the body and sometimes in elastic deformation and other effects, any of the natural influences (as electromagnetism, gravity, the strong ~, and the weak ~) that exist especially between particles and determine the structure of the universe, the quality of conveying impressions intensely in writing or speech , see: power ~less adjective II. transitive verb (~d; forcing) Date: 14th century to do violence to, to compel by physical, moral, or intellectual means, to make or cause especially through natural or logical necessity , 4. to press, drive, pass, or effect against resistance or inertia , to impose or thrust urgently, importunately, or inexorably , to achieve or win by strength in struggle or violence: as, to win one's way into , to break open or through , 6. to raise or accelerate to the utmost , to produce only with unnatural or unwilling effort , to wrench, strain, or use (language) with marked unnaturalness and lack of ease, 7. to hasten the rate of progress or growth of, to bring (as plants) to maturity out of the normal season , to induce (as a particular bid or play by another player) in a card game by some conventional act, play, bid, or response, 9. to cause (a runner in baseball) to be put out on a ~-out, to cause (a run) to be scored in baseball by giving a base on balls when the bases are full, ~r noun Synonyms: see: ~