close-order drill

1. 1.

   (military) military drill of troops in standard marching (shoulder-to-shoulder)

   Broadermilitary drill

   military

Questions about close-order drill

What does close-order drill mean?

close-order drill means "(military) military drill of troops in standard marching (shoulder-to-shoulder)".

Is close-order drill a common word?

close-order drill is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.