compulsion.

1. A powerful urge to carry out an action, sometimes difficult to resist.

2. Coercion or a constraint that obliges someone to act rather than choose freely.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• feel a compulsion to
• compulsive checking

On the page

He felt a compulsion to check the latch again.

The compulsion to count the tiles distracted her from the footsteps.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror. Forms: Singular compulsion; plural compulsions. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.