Word of the Day Archive
Sunday September 10, 2006
suasion \SWAY-zhun\ , noun:
The act of persuading; persuasion.
As in the 1960s, violence converged with dynamism in American life, but unlike that subsequent period of protest, the militancy of the 1930s was restrained by the long arm of an American political tradition that favored reform by moral suasion.
-- Nona Balakian, The World of William Saroyan
He visualized a world wherein power is exercised peacefully by moral suasion and political acumen, a world of idealism in many ways.
-- George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb
Some of the earliest protests of the incipient civil rights movement demanded the removal of baseball's color line. Beyond this cultural suasion, legal efforts to mandate integration were under way almost two years before Jackie Robinson donned a Brooklyn Dodger uniform.
-- Dean Chadwin, Those Damn Yankees
Even more reassuring--more wishful and escapist, from our secularist-modern perspective--is the idea that the universe is moral and hence responsive to moral suasion.
-- Yi-Fu Tuan, Escapism
Suasion comes from Latin suasio, from suadere, "to present in a pleasing manner," hence, "to advise." It is related to suave, "gracious or agreeable in manner."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for suasion
