backdoor draft
n.— «That’s a draft…a backdoor draft. That’s compulsory military service…against the individual’s will.» —“Uncle Sam still wants them” by Bettijane Levine Orlando Sentinel (Florida) Nov. 5, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Chad in Hilliard, Florida, wonders about the expression old as Methuselah, meaning “extremely advanced in years.” The phrase references Methuselah, a figure in Jewish, Islamic, and Christian tradition said to be 969 years old when he...