Force (disambiguation)

"Force" has several meanings, most of them based on the concept of an outside power compelling action, such as a "forced march" or a "forced play":

In physics, force (physics) is the fundamental cause of motion, as in "F=ma."

In military science, a force is a military group, such as in "armed force."

In cooking, "force" is an obsolete word (derived from "farce" and meaning "to cut [up]") for stuffing, usually used now only of "forced meat" (or "forcemeat"), which is seasoned ground meat.

In finance, money may be described as a "force" that can be "leveraged" to increase it.

In games, including some sports, certain actions or results are said to be forced when the game's rules or conventions require them, as a "forced bet" in poker or a "forcing bid" in contract bridge.

In gardening, forcing a flower bulb means processing it so that it blooms at a different time of the year (or season) than it normally does.

In law, "force (law)" involves either unlawful violence, as in a "forced entry," or legal validity, as in the "force of law."

In mathematics, "force" is used in the sense of given conditions' "forcing" a certain result and, therefore, in the related sense of a "brute-force" method, which usually means one that is neither efficient nor intellectually elegant but is "forced" to reach the desired result eventually.

In philosophy, force is a term going back to Frege, allowing a distinction of statements made with assertoric force (assertions), from other kinds.

In politics, political force is state-sanctioned violence used to enforce the decrees of a political regime.

In science fiction, The Force is a mystical power in the Star Wars universe.

In sociology, force compels obedience by means of actual or threatened violence or sanctions.

In British slang, force is an old dialect word for a waterfall, describing its power in the same sense as "force of nature." But cf. foss in Icelandic.