duress.
Harsh treatment.
Meaning & usage
Harsh treatment.
Constraint by threat.
Restraint in which a person is influenced, whether by lawful or unlawful forceful compulsion of their liberty by monition or implementation of physical enforcement; legally for the incurring of civil liability, of a citizen's arrest, or of subrogation, or illegally for the committing of an offense, of forcing a contract, or of using threats.
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Middle English duresse, from Old French duresse, from Latin dūritia (“hardness”), from dūrus (“hard”).
To put under duress; to pressure.
Someone was duressing her.
The small nation was duressed into giving up territory.
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Middle English duresse, from Old French duresse, from Latin dūritia (“hardness”), from dūrus (“hard”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.