close-order drill
- noun
- /kloʊs ˈɔrdər drɪl/
- Specialized
:
ejercicio en formación cerrada
- For the ceremonial event, the troops practiced the close-order drill to ensure they marched shoulder-to-shoulder in unison.
Examples
-
Though she had to admit that when it came to close order drill in the high desert, he had a point.
Fiction book (1999) -
However, this ordering appears to have little resemblance to the European system of close-order drill.
Academic text (1992) -
There were five or six marching bands and Destiny's Child on stage doing crotch grabs and a U.S. drill team doing a close-order drill.
Blog text (19) -
During the parade, the soldiers executed the close-order drill with precision as they marched in perfect formation.
-
The veterans gathered at the stadium to participate in a close-order drill that showcased their years of military training.
Synonyms
257
3.4
Repeated practice to improve a skill, like in school or the army
3
3.6
Training that teaches soldiers to march, move together, and use weapons
Surface Forms
Morphology
close-order + drill
The meaning is directly derivable from the parts: 'drill' is a repeated exercise and 'close-order' can be analyzed as 'close' (tight/near) + 'order' (arrangement/formation), yielding an exercise performed in a tight formation. This compositional interpretation is predictable and matches a common military concept found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words should understand the MWE.
Etymology
Close-order drill comes from soldiers standing very near each other in a neat line. The words close meaning 'near' and order meaning 'formation' create the picture of troops marching 'shoulder-to-shoulder' in a tight parade step, so the phrase means a careful, formal military march.