Compelling

//kəmˈpɛlɪŋ// adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An act of compulsion; an obliging somebody to do something.
Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of compel form-of, gerund, participle, present
Adjective
  1. 1
    very interesting; able to capture and hold one's attention

    "The novel was so compelling that I couldn't put it down."

  2. 2
    capable of causing someone to believe or agree

    "He made a compelling argument."

  3. 3
    strong and forceful; that causes one to feel like they must do something

    "I would need a very compelling reason to leave my job."

Adjective
  1. 1
    tending to persuade by forcefulness of argument wordnet
  2. 2
    driving or forcing wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
actuatingacuteanimatingaptcausalcausative

Example

More examples

"As I stood upon the bluff before my cottage on that clear cold night in the early part of March, 1886, the noble Hudson flowing like the grey and silent spectre of a dead river below me, I felt again the strange, compelling influence of the mighty god of war, my beloved Mars, which for ten long and lonesome years I had implored with outstretched arms to carry me back to my lost love."

Etymology

By surface analysis, compel + -ing.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.