back door draft
n.— «[Arnold] Garcia:&hellip’”The use of the increaseing dependence on the reserve and guard components amounts to, as one of the editorial writers said in a meeting yesterday, a back door draft.”…[Carol] Lin: “That’s interesting. A back door draft. In a sense even though it’s a volunteer army, but these guys didn’t sign up with the idea of spending their Christmas in the desert, I [sic] sure, certainly under these battle conditions.”» —“New Poll Shows Half Of Americans Disapprove Of Bush’s Handling Of Iraq” by Carol Lin CNN Sunday Nov. 9, 2003. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he...
Trivia time! Where in the United States can you visit Soda City? If you answered Columbia, South Carolina, you’re right! This nickname apparently derives from an old practice of abbreviating Columbia as Cola. The locals then referred to the town as...