compel
[kəmˡpel]
The verdict
“compel” is uncommon German (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency German
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - zwingen, nötigen, erzwingen
Corpus desk
Index DE-compel · compel · German
compel · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | compel |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | [kəmˡpel] |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Langschwanz-Rang von „compel“ im Deutschen
Rare enough to double-check
compel is uncommon German outside the top frequency list, classed as averb, transcribed [kəmˡpel]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "zwingen, nötigen, erzwingen".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for compel, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct German form is compel, spelled C-O-M-P-E-L.
Definition
- 1zwingen, nötigen, erzwingen
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how compel appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
She was compelled to quit her job.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.