What does oblige mean in English?

You can learn oblige Pronunciation, Grammar & Synonyms in this most authoritative English Dictionary.

oblige Meaning, Definition, Pronunciation, Grammar & Synonyms❤️

0 to force someone to do something, or to make it necessary for someone to do something:
- The law obliges companies to pay decent wages to their employees.
- The law does not obligate sellers to accept the highest offer.
1 to please or help someone, especially by doing something they have asked you to do:
- We only went to the party to oblige some old friends who asked us to be there.
- We needed a guide and he was only too happy to oblige.
2 to force or make it expected for someone to do something:
- Circumstances obliged him to leave town.
3 to please or help someone, esp. by doing something the person has asked you to do:
- [ I ] We needed a guide and he was only too happy to oblige.
4 to force someone to do something, or to make it necessary for someone to do something:
- be obliged to do sth Employers are obliged to pay employees sick pay.
- Sellers are not legally obliged to accept the highest offer.
- Companies are obliged by law to carry out regular safety checks.
- a law/treaty/agreement obliges sth The law obliges full disclosure of political contributions.
5 to please or help someone, especially by doing something they have asked you to do:
- He went to the conference to oblige his boss.
- We needed some help with our accounts and she was only too happy to oblige.

Fearing disqualification, competing architects feel obliged to keep closely to the brief, and their opportunity to question it is very limited.
Convention and common sense dictated that potential purchasers were obliged to scrutinise the accounts of the target company.
Thus, donors should not resent a lack of giving on behalf of past recipients, nor should recipients feel obliged to return benefits to a donor.
I do wish publishers would stop feeling obliged to make claims which are at best over-ambitious and at worse misleading.
The bill obliges physicians to report euthanasia to the prosecution, while euthanasia itself remains a criminal offence.
The maid was obliging, pointing out the rooms where both men slept.
Only in 1820 were the crown lawyers statutorily obliged to bring a libel information to trial within a year of the filing date.
Such - mostly community-level - organisational structures have also been obliged to develop the capacity to deal with other stakeholders at the local, regional and national level.