press gang 
noun historical
A body of men employed to enlist men forcibly into service in the army or navy.The Marine Society offered an alternative to the press gang, a violent and socially divisive method of conscription which the perpetually under-manned Royal Navy used in every war....
- A press gang might withdraw, releasing its victims.
- The reason for the difference was the traditional Royal Navy view that all officers were volunteers, but that, recalling the press gang, ratings were generally not so in wartime.
verb [with object] (press-gang) chiefly historical
1Forcibly enlist (someone) into service in the army or navy: (as adjective press-ganged) a press-ganged navy...
- ‘No one intends to press-gang students into the Army,’ Ivanov said Friday.
- You'll have to be my cover until I press-gang him aboard with a bit of my much vaunted legerdemain.
- Another danger for Whitby men was of being press-ganged into the Royal Navy, and they would try all kinds of tricks to escape the attentions of the Press Gang.
1.1 (press-gang someone into) Force someone to do something: we press-ganged Simon into playing...
- Rubin, in a sense, press-gangs Stella into an old battle.
- The ambulance officers ‘did what they could’ but had to press gang a police officer to drive their vehicle back to Liverpool.
- But the genuine power of such stories is ultimately devalued by this tendency to press gang any old tale into the mythology of a particular city.
- third rail
- third-rate
- third-rater
- third reading
- Third Reich
- Third Republic
- third sector
- third time lucky (or third time is the charm)
- third ventricle
- third wave
- third way
- Third World
- thirst
- thirstful
- thirstily
- thirstiness
- thirstland
- thirst-making
- thirst-provoking
- thirst quencher
- thirst-quenching
- thirsty
- thirteen
- Thirteen Colonies
- thirteenth