Other forms: press-ganged
To press-gang somebody is to force them into a job they never agreed to. The volunteer who was told rather than asked.
The phrase is history first: a press gang was a party of sailors who seized men off the street and took them into the Royal Navy by force, a legal practice in Britain into the nineteenth century. The modern use is figurative and usually half-joking — press-ganged into helping with the school fair, press-ganged onto the committee. It nearly always takes into. The seriousness has drained out of it, but the shape of the complaint has not: nobody asked.
1verbpress-gangTo force someone into doing something they did not agree to.
“I was press-ganged into running the raffle.”
informal in this meaning — an editor’s judgement
2noungroupA group who seized men and forced them into naval service.
“He was taken by the press-gang at seventeen.”
From press + gang.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 19 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word