Other forms: persuaded, persuades, persuading
To persuade someone is to talk them round, giving reasons until they agree to do what you want. Talking a friend into coming out when she has already changed into her pyjamas.
The grammar is the thing to get right. You persuade someone TO DO something, never persuade someone doing something. There is a second pattern for beliefs: persuade someone OF something, or persuade someone THAT it is true. The noun is persuasion and the adjective is persuasive, as in a persuasive argument or a persuasive speaker. Persuade takes time and reasons, while convince is closer to changing what a person believes. And you can be persuaded against your better judgement, which is where the word does its quiet damage.
1verbpersuadeTo make someone agree to do something by giving them reasons.~60%
“She persuaded her father to sell the car.”
synonyms: coax, win over
2verbconvinceTo make someone believe that something is true.~40%
“Nothing you say will persuade me that he meant it.”
synonyms: convince
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Persuade came straight from Latin persuadeo, to persuade. Its root is the Proto-Indo-European sweh-d-, the same one that gave English sweet. To persuade a person was to make a thing sweet to them, until they wanted it themselves.
Proto-Indo-European
*sweh₂d-
Latin
persuādeō — to persuade
English, today
persuade
From Latin persuādeō (“to persuade”). Cognate to for, sweet.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA