Persuade

Persuade - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

PERSUA'DE, v.t. [L. persuadeo; per and suadeo, to urge or incite.]

1. To influence by argument, advice, intreaty or expostulation; to draw or incline the will to a determination by presenting motives to the mind.

I should be glad, if I could persuade him to write such another critick on any thing of mine.

Almost thou persuadest me to be a christian. Acts 26.

2. To convince by argument, or reasons offered; or to convince by reasons suggested by reflection or deliberation, or by evidence presented in any manner to the mind.

Beloved, we are persuaded better things of you. Heb 6.

3. To inculcate by argument or expostulation. [Little used.]

4. To treat by persuasion. [Not in use.]

Persuasion - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

PERSUA'SION, n. s as z. [L. persuasio.]

1. The act of persuading; the act of influencing the mind by arguments or reasons offered, or by any thing that moves the mind or passions, or inclines the will to a determination.

For thou hast all the arts of fine persuasion.

2. The state of being persuaded or convinced; settled opinion or conviction proceeding from arguments and reasons offered by others, or suggested by one's own reflections.

When we have no other certainty of being in the right, but our own persuasion that we are so--

3. A creed or belief; or a sect or party adhering to a creed or system of opinions; as men of the same persuasion; all persuasions concur in the measure.

per-swad', per-swazhun: (1) In the older English "persuade" need not mean "convince" (although this is its usual sense in the King James Version: Mt 27:20, etc.), but may mean only "attempt to convince," "argue with." This is well brought out in Ac 26:28, where the Greek is literally "In little thou `persuadest' peitheis to make me a Christian." the King James Version took peitheis as "convince" ("almost thou persuadest me ...."), but this is impossible, and so the Revised Version (British and American) rendered peitheis by "thou wouldest fain." To keep something of the language of the King James Version, "persuasion" was supplied after "little," but it should have been italicized, for it is merely conjectural, as the American Revised Version margin recognizes by giving "time" as an alternative for "persuasion." The text of the passage, however, is suspected. See ALMOST. Similarly in Ac 13:43, the Revised Version (British and American) replaces "persuade" by "urge," and the same change should have been made also in 2Ki 18:32 and its parallels. (2) The "popular persuasions" of 1 Esdras 5:73 are "efforts to persuade the people" (uncertain text, however). Ac 19:8 the King James Version writes "persuading the things" (the Revised Version (British and American) "as to the things") for "present the things persuasively." And in Ga 1:10 (the English Revised Version and the King James Version, not in the American Standard Revised Version) and 2Co 5:11, there is a half-ironic force in the word: Paul's enemies have accused him of using unworthy persuasion in making his conversions.

Burton Scott Easton