enforce

verb

Etymology: From Middle English enforcen, from Old French enforcier, from Late Latin infortiāre, from in- + fortis (“strong”).

1. To keep up, impose or bring into effect something, not necessarily by force.

   “The police are there to enforce the law.”

   “1929, Chiang Kai-shek, quoted in “Nationalist Notes,” Time, 11 February, 1929, Our task is only half finished. It will be my duty to enforce the decisions of the conference and I hereby pledge myself to that end.”

2. To give strength or force to; to affirm, to emphasize.

   “The victim was able to enforce his evidence against the alleged perpetrator.”

3. To strengthen (a castle, town etc.) with extra troops, fortifications etc.
4. To intensify, make stronger, add force to.
5. To exert oneself, to try hard.

   “I pray you enforce youreselff at that justis that ye may be beste, for my love.”

6. To compel, oblige (someone or something); to force.

   “Sweete prince I come, these these thy amorous lines, / Might haue enforst me to haue swum from France, / And like Leander gaspt vpon the sande, / So thou wouldst smile and take me in thy armes.”

   “Uladislaus the Second, King of Poland, and Peter Dunnius, Earl of Shrine[…]had been hunting late, and were enforced to lodge in a poor cottage.”

7. To make or gain by force; to force.

   “to enforce a passage”

   “Ne shame he thought to shonne so hideous might, / The ydle stroke, enforcing furious way, / Missing the marke of his misaymed sight / Did fall to ground […]”

8. To put in motion or action by violence; to drive.

   “Auster and Aquilon with winged Steeds All ſweating, tilt about the watery heauens, With ſhiuering ſpeares enforcing thunderclaps, And from their ſhields ſtrike flames of lightening”

   “If they’ll do neither, we will come to them, / And make them skirr away, as swift as stones / Enforced from the old Assyrian slings:”

9. To give force to; to strengthen; to invigorate; to energize.

   “to enforce arguments or requests”

   “[T]he eloquence of the declaration, not contradicting, but enforcing sentiments of the truest humanity, has left stings that have penetrated more than skin-deep into my mind […]”

10. To urge; to ply hard; to lay much stress upon.

    “In this point charge him home, that he affects / Tyrannical power: if he evade us there, / Enforce him with his envy to the people, / And that the spoil got on the Antiates / Was ne’er distributed.”

11. To prove; to evince.

    “But what argument are ye able to shew, whereby it was euer prooued by Caluin, that any one sentence of Scripture doth necessarily enforce these things, or the rest wherein your opinion concurreth with his against the orders of your owne Church?”