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Hamlet vocabulary
366 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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impressment
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synonyms: ~press-gang ???
► definition
Definition:The act of seizing for public use, or of impressing into public service; compulsion to serve; as, the impressment of provisions or of sailors.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)---legalised enforcement of service in the British navy, which has for years been in abeyance, and is not likely to be ever again revived.Rev. James Wood. The Nuttall Encyclopedia (1907)
► uses
Uses:
After a few months on the battlefields of Alabama, he was impressed to a foundry in Selma along with three hundred captured, lent or taken coloredmen.
Toni Morrison. Beloved (1988)
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The great scandal of our naval service -- impressment -- died a protracted death.
J. H. Burton.
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At the time of the Battle of Trafalgar over half the Royal Navy's 120,000 sailors were pressed men. The power of the Impressment Service to conscript was limited by law to seafarers, including merchant seamen, longshoremen and fishermen.
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week.
William Shakespeare. Hamlet
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