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":
- Force is an old British dialect word for a waterfall.
- In cooking, force is also an obsolete word (derived from "farce"), for stuffing, usually used of "forced meat" (or "forcemeat") which is seasoned ground meat.
- In the field of law, force (law) involves 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 the field of physics, force (physics) is the fundamental cause of motion, as in "F=ma".