Having the power or quality of compelling; tending to compel or drive something forward.
From Latin compellare (to address, summon) plus the suffix -ative, which means 'tending to' or 'having the quality of.' This combines the root pellere (to push) with the prefix com- (together).
Compellative belongs to a quirky family of Latin-derived adjectives that never quite caught on in English—we prefer 'compelling' instead. Yet in legal and philosophical Latin texts, compellative was the precise term for a type of imperative utterance that demanded action.
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