Compelled

How to spell compelled

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce compelled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does compelled mean?

1. verbForced or strongly obliged someone to do something, or felt a powerful inner drive to act.

Compelled in a sentence

• She felt compelled to apologise after rereading the angry email.

• The new regulations compelled every landlord to fit smoke alarms.

Where does compelled come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'compel', which English took from the Latin verb compellere, meaning 'to drive together' or 'to force'. That verb was built from the prefix com-, meaning 'together' or used here as an intensifier, joined to pellere, meaning 'to drive, push, or beat'. The same pellere root drives a whole family of English words, including 'propel' (drive forward), 'expel' (drive out), 'repel' (drive back), and 'dispel' (drive apart), so recognising that shared root helps fix the single -pel- in the middle. English adopted 'compel' through Old French in the late 1300s, and the spelling trap appears when the ending is added: because the stress falls on the final syllable, the l doubles to give 'compelled' rather than the tempting single-l 'compeled'.

How the word is built

• com- (together, intensive)
• pel (to drive, from Latin pellere)
• -led (past-tense ending with doubled l)