press gang

1. 1.

   a detachment empowered to force civilians to serve in the army or navy

   Broaderdetachment

Questions about press gang

What does press gang mean?

press gang means "a detachment empowered to force civilians to serve in the army or navy".

Is press gang a common word?

press gang 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.