duress

Meanings

Noun

• Harsh treatment.
• Constraint by threat.
• Restraint in which a person is influenced, whether by lawful or unlawful forceful compulsion of their liberty by monition or implementation of physical enforcement; legally for the incurring of civil liability, of a citizen's arrest, or of subrogation, or illegally for the committing of an offense, of forcing a contract, or of using threats.

Verb

• To put under duress; to pressure.

Origin

• Borrowed into Middle English from Old French duresse, from Latin duritia ("hardness"), from durus.