frogmarch

• frog march, frog-march, frog's march

From frog +‎ march. Originated circa 1871, from the resemblance of the target to a splayed-out frog.

frogmarch (third-person singular simple present frogmarches, present participle frogmarching, simple past and past participle frogmarched) (transitive)

1. To march or force a person forward while holding their arms from behind or the side, as a prisoner.
   • 2024 May 29, Ryan Lenora Brown, “South Africans head to polls. After 30 years, has Mandela’s party lost its luster?”, in The Christian Science Monitor:

     Maybe it happened during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when no one could work and soldiers frog-marched curfew-breakers through the township streets like criminals.

2. (figurative) To force a person forward against their will.
   • 1940, Thomas Firbank, I Bought a Mountain:

     The wind frogmarched me at a run into the house.

3. (dated) To carry a person face-down with one person holding each limb.
4. To forcibly relocate a person, especially in a degrading or humiliating manner.

• (to march a person as a prisoner): frog-walk

frogmarch (plural frogmarches)

1. The process of frogmarching a person.

• “frogmarch”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “Frogmarch”, in BBC Learning English‎^[1], BBC, 26 August 2014