to prevail upon
4
7.7
- phrasal verb
- /prɪˈveɪl əˈpɒn/
:
persuadir
- After dinner, Sir Radford prevailed upon the others to join him in a game of whist.
Examples
-
But he could not prevail upon the girl, a mere eleven years old, to admit to the crime.
Fiction book (2002) -
I wonder if we might prevail upon Mr. Thomson to read again a small portion of Mr. Jefferson's declaration.
-
And the boys in the band prevailed upon the property man to do his stuff.
-
Um, I wonder if I might prevail upon you to change my father over there into his old self.
-
I shall do my best, learned friend, to prevail upon Lord Antony to attend.
-
As our Mary Jane has so many of her young and talented students her tonight, I hope you'll all join with me in prevailing upon her, to give us a small demonstration of her musical skills.
-
Calm was restored only when the President of Notre Dame prevailed upon the anti-Klan forces to withdraw.
Academic text (1991) -
Emily would know what to say, how to prevail upon Caroline's sense of proportion—even of survival.
Fiction book (1993) -
When Mrs. Finston broke her back in a car accident during a snowstorm, Mr. Finston prevailed upon my parents to take care of the twins so he wouldn't have to cancel a long-awaited cross-country train trip.
Fiction book (2001) -
I was able to prevail upon my friend to help me move this weekend.
Synonyms
∞
2.7
Make someone believe something is true or agree to do something
591
3.2
To strongly encourage someone to do something
472
2.7
To make someone agree or do something by giving reasons
149
4.2
To try to make someone do something
54
3.3
Get someone to support or agree with you
54
4.1
To gently persuade someone by being kind and patient
51
4.9
Persuade someone to do something
23
6.7
To persuade someone to do something after repeated effort
18
3.0
Make someone think differently about something
16
7.7
To strongly encourage someone to do something
15
7.7
To persuade someone to do something by gentle talk and praise
2
5.4
Convince someone to join an activity, often when they do not want to
1
6.0
To use influence to persuade someone to do something
1
4.4
Get someone to agree or do something by pressuring them
To persuade someone to accept your idea or plan
Persuade someone to do what you want
Antonyms
How Persuasive
Surface Forms
Morphology
prevail + upon
The verb 'prevail' as defined here already encodes the action of bringing someone around by urging, and the preposition 'upon' simply marks the target of that action, so the combined meaning 'to persuade someone to do something they are reluctant to do' is directly derivable. This follows a regular verb + preposition composition pattern (agent action + target) that is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should comprehend the MWE.
Etymology
The phrase prevail upon comes from the image of one person slowly winning over another: prevail means 'to win' and upon points to doing that 'over' the other person. So it came to mean 'to persuade someone who does not want to'.