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Enforce vs Ensure - What's the difference?

enforce | ensure |

As verbs the difference between enforce and ensure

is that enforce is to strengthen (a castle, town etc.) with extra troops, fortifications etc while ensure is to make a pledge to (someone); to promise, guarantee (someone of something); to assure.

enforce

English

Alternative forms

* inforce (obsolete)

Verb

(enforc)
  • (obsolete) To strengthen (a castle, town etc.) with extra troops, fortifications etc.
  • (obsolete) To intensify, make stronger, add force to.
  • (obsolete, reflexive) To exert oneself, to try hard.
  • *, Bk.VII:
  • *:I pray you enforce youreselff at that justis that ye may be beste, for my love.
  • To give strength or force to; to affirm, to emphasize.
  • :The victim was able to enforce his evidence against the alleged perpetrator.
  • (archaic) To compel, oblige (someone or something); to force.
  • *, I.2.4.iv:
  • *:Uladislaus the Second, King of Poland, and Peter Dunnius, Earl of Shrinehad been hunting late, and were enforced to lodge in a poor cottage.
  • *1899 , E. OE. Somerville and Martin Ross, Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.'', Great Uncle McCarthy :
  • *:In a few minutes I was stealthily groping my way down my own staircase, with a box of matches in my hand, enforced by scientific curiosity, but none the less armed with a stick.
  • To keep up, impose or bring into effect something, not necessarily by force.
  • :The police are there to enforce the law.
  • (obsolete) To make or gain by force; to force.
  • :to enforce a passage
  • *Spenser
  • *:enforcing furious way
  • (obsolete) To put in motion or action by violence; to drive.
  • *Shakespeare
  • *:As swift as stones / Enforced from the old Assyrian slings.
  • (obsolete) To give force to; to strengthen; to invigorate; to urge with energy.
  • :to enforce arguments or requests
  • *Burke
  • *:enforcing sentiment of the thrust humanity
  • (obsolete) To urge; to ply hard; to lay much stress upon.
  • *Shakespeare
  • *:Enforce him with his envy to the people.
  • To prove; to evince.
  • :(Hooker)
  • Derived terms

    * enforcer * enforcement

    ensure

    English

    Verb

    (ensur)
  • To make a pledge to (someone); to promise, guarantee (someone of something); to assure.
  • *:
  • *:Thenne he cryed hym mercy and sayd Faire knyght for goddes loue slee me not / and I shall ensure the neuer werre ageynst thy lady / but be alwey toward her / Thenne Bors lete hym be
  • To make sure or certain of something (usually some future event or condition).
  • :
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington
  • , title= Keeping the mighty honest , passage=British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.}}

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