conscription

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noun con·scrip·tion \kən-ˈskrip-shən\

Definition of conscription

: compulsory enrollment of persons especially for military service : draft During the war the armed forces were heavily dependent on conscription.

See conscription defined for English-language learners

Examples of conscription in a Sentence

young people who face conscription into the army

Recent Examples of conscription from the Web

These have included brute force, conscription, tribute, and religious doctrines ordaining social inequalities.

— robert m. sapolsky, WSJ, "Human Sacrifice As a Tool of Social Control", 24 Mar. 2017
During his time in office, Israel airlifted some 7,000 Ethiopian Jews who had trekked to refugee camps in Sudan to escape famine, anti-Semitism, forced conscription of boys and other threats that had made their lives in Ethiopia precarious.

— marilyn berger, New York Times, "Shimon Peres, an Enduring Pillar From Israel’s Founding Era, Dies at 93", 27 Sep. 2016
Up through 1960, when National Service ended, Stapleton sheltered a steady stream of people fleeing mandatory conscription.

— kelsey osgood, The New Yorker, "Life at One of England’s Last Tolstoyan Communes", 6 Jan. 2016
Twentieth century conflict involved traditional nation-state wars with formal declarations of war, direct involvement of the public, conscription and mass mobilization, often increased taxation, and even rationing.

— james fallows, The Atlantic, "How Gary Hart Tried to Change Military History", 28 Dec. 2014
If there were mandatory conscription in this country?

— colum mccann, Esquire, "Colum McCann: What I've Learned About Being a Man", 5 Nov. 2013

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'conscription'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

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.