duress

Meanings

1. Harsh treatment.
2. Constraint by threat.
3. 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.

1. To put under duress; to pressure.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English duresse, from Old French duresse, from Latin dūritia (“hardness”), from dūrus (“hard”).