Selective Service System
1
5.4
- noun
- /sɪˈlɛktɪv ˈsɜrvɪs ˈsɪstəm/
- Formal
:
Sistema de Servicio Selectivo
- It contained a copy of Selective Service System Form 150, the Special Form for Conscientious Objectors, together with a carbon typescript of my responses to questions on the form.
Examples
-
Some of us served in the armed forces, being subject to the Selective Service System even though we were not permitted to enlist in the "regular" forces.
Academic text (1995) -
The Selective Service System was organized after the passage of the Act establishing it on 18 May 1917.
Academic text (1991) -
Discuss with students the U.S. selective service system created shortly before the U.S. entered World War II.
Blog text (12) -
This correspondence was a prelude to the overlapping throughout 1918 of the Selective Service System and the Polish recruiting effort.
Academic text (1991) -
However, the research team encountered strong resistance and a number of bureaucratic barriers as we tried to gain access to the Selective Service System files to draw a sample consonant with the sample used by Lee Robins.
Academic text (2009) -
At the press conference, it was announced that the MCSO had developed sufficient evidence to indicate that Mr. Obama's Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth and his Selective Service System registration form were criminal forgeries.
Blog text (25) -
The Selective Service System requires young men to register for the military draft in the United States.
-
In the 1940s, many young men registered with the Selective Service System to prepare for potential military service.
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During times of war, the government activates the Selective Service System to ensure enough personnel are available for military enlistment.
Synonyms
2
7.6
A United States government agency that registers people for required military service
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally suggestive: 'selective' (choosing) + 'service' (military service) + 'system' (formal set of procedures) yields the idea of an official mechanism that selects people for military service. However, because it is a named U.S. agency and encodes the specific institutional function of administering compulsory draft/registration, the full legal/institutional sense is not completely predictable from the parts for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Selective Service System comes from how the government picked people for military 'service' in wartime. Selective means choosing certain people, Service means duty in the armed forces, and System is the agency that runs this process, so the name is used for the office that manages the 'draft'.