compulsory

Pluralcompulsories

1. 1
   adjective

   Required by a rule, law, or authority; not optional.

   Military service remains compulsory for young men in several nations.

   The new policy makes annual safety training compulsory for all staff.

   Similarmandatory, obligatory, required, binding, requisite

   Oppositeoptional, voluntary, elective, discretionary

   Note

   This is the everyday sense, and it came in from Latin: Late Latin compulsorius, from compulsus, which displaced the native Old English ġenīedelīċ. Though it sounds absolute, it grades. Ugo Pagano's Democracy and Efficiency in the Economic Enterprise (1996) calls membership in a firm "more compulsory" than membership in a municipality. It sits comfortably beside schooling, attendance and fees, the things one must do, attend or pay.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An item, task, or requirement that must be done rather than freely chosen.

   Ethics is listed as a compulsory in the first-year curriculum.

   In gymnastics, every athlete performs the same compulsories before the free routines.

   Similarrequirement, requisite

   Oppositeelective, optional

   Note

   The adjective turned into a noun is most at home in the plural, compulsories. In ice dance, the compulsories are the set portion of a competition, distinct from the free dance. The Associated Press, writing in the New York Times in 2008, describes a pair who built a big lead in the compulsories and lost the free dance. The singular, a compulsory, names any single required item or task.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having the power to compel or force; exerting constraint.

   The statute granted the agency compulsory authority over local utilities.

   Such compulsory measures left the tenants no real choice in the matter.

   Similarcoercive, binding, forcible

   Oppositevoluntary, advisory, permissive

   Note

   Here the word faces the other way: it describes not what is required of someone but what does the requiring. Compulsory measures are the ones that force compliance. The two readings can blur, since a compulsory measure may be both required and coercive. Ask whether the noun is the obligation itself, which is the everyday "required" meaning, or the instrument that applies the pressure.

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