conscription
noun
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With its scrip- root, conscription means basically writing someone's name on a list—a list that, unfortunately, a lot of people usually don't want to be on. Conscription has existed at least since ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom (27th century B.C.), though universal conscription has been rare throughout history. Forms of conscription were used by Prussia, Switzerland, Russia, and other European powers in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the U.S., conscription was first applied during the Civil War, by both the North and the South. In the North there were pockets of resistance, and the draft led to riots in several cities. The U.S. abandoned conscription at the end of the war and didn't revive it until World War I.
Examples of conscription in a Sentence
Efrat Lachter, FOXNews.com, 5 June 2025
Traffic dried up, and to escape conscription into the Confederate Army, Twain headed west with his brother Orion to the Nevada territory.
—Mary Ann Gwinn, Los Angeles Times, 9 May 2025
Last February, a Russian anti-war project named Get Lost, which was created to help Russia's men evade or escape conscription in Ukraine, said cases of desertion from the military had increased tenfold that year.
—Josh Hammer, MSNBC Newsweek, 15 Apr. 2025
No conscription here, only the voluntary battle of Yoshi’s Cookie versus Altered Beast.
—Mitch Wallace, Forbes.com, 14 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for conscription
Cite this Entry
“Conscription.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conscription. Accessed 11 Jun. 2025.
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