Definition (English):—
Definition (Spanish):—
Comments:Etymologically speaking, 'enforce' is Latin, or at least has Latin roots, but originated either in Middle Ages French or Renaissance English, and was being used in the sense of 'ensure compliance with a law' as of the mid-1600s. Thus, though intuition would say that there must be a common root somewhere, the meaning of 'fuerza' and 'forzar' are far separated from the English meaning in this context, being far more physical in their connotative usage. 'enforce' is also a transitive verb, a situation which is not easily mirrored, either, in Spanish. Further complicating the issue is the broad euphemistic or metonymical usage of 'law enforcement' in English. As a blanket term, it is used to refer to any sort of body or agency which uses legally sanctioned force to ensure compliance with the law. Given English's syntactic flexibility, this presents the translator or interpreter frequently with the struggle of having to construct a significantly different sentence or work-around in Spanish in order to adequately express the English. Keep in mind as well the almost-homonymical phrase 'in force', which corresponds to 'en vigor'.