To Urge
To Coerce, To Press, To Draw Near
transitive verb, godan verb
Because the hiragana ends with an う sound, you know this word is a verb. The kanji itself means urge so the verb vocab version is to urge.
Since this word consists of a kanji with hiragana attached, you can bet that it will use the kun'yomi reading. You didn't learn that reading with this kanji, so here's a mnemonic to help you: Are you trying to urge me to do that? Are you trying to coerce me to do that? Which one is it? It's all semantics (せま)!
彼に金を返すよう迫ったが、逃げられてしまった。
I pressed him to pay back the money, but he ran away.