exhort vs extort
Definitions
verb
- spur on or encourage especially by cheers and shouts
- force or impel in an indicated direction
Examples
The record was, I think, called Peace, a heart-warming exhortation for world leaders to avoid war – although many of them, unbelievably, have completely ignored the doughty cloggers' message in the intervening years.
I have found among my old papers a kind of congratulation and exhortation which I made to myself on dying at an age when I had the courage to meet death with serenity, without having experienced any great evils, either of body or mind.
We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults.
Definitions
verb
- get or cause to become in a difficult or laborious manner
- obtain by coercion or intimidation
- obtain through intimidation
Examples
After being faced with the "extortionate" demand, Lee and others at his resort called the Canadian consulate and department of foreign affairs emergency line, only to be told to pay up
His violent menaces had extorted his readmission into the church, against which Cyprian protests with much vehemence: ne pecuniae commissae sibi fraudator, ne stuprator virginum, ne matrimoniorum multorum depopulator et corruptor, ultra adhuc sponsam Christi incorruptam praesentiae suae dedecore, et impudica atque incesta contagione, violaret.
Other than releasing small amounts of oil from the Reserve for very limited short term climatic or pipeline disruptions, extortionist high oil prices that were risking a national economic calamity were never adequate cause to tap the SPR in this administration's reckoning.
