compulsion

An irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences.

Noun

An irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences.
- During the basketball game, I had a sudden compulsion to have a smoke.
- It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: perhaps out of a desire to escape the gravity of this world or to get...
The use of authority, influence, or other power to force (compel) a person or persons to act.
- From the opening of the City & South London Railway independent electric locomotives were used under compulsion of the Board of Trade. - 1941 May, “Jubilee of the City Tube”, in Railway Magazine, page 223:
- But Treaty translator and Ottawa leader Andrew Blackbird described the Treaty as made “not with the free will of the Indians, but by compulsion.” - 2016 January 17, “Wealthy cabals run America”, in Al Jazeera America,...
The lawful use of violence (i.e. by the administration).

Borrowed from Middle French compulsion, from Late Latin compulsiō, from Latin compellere (“to compel, coerce”); see compel.