Word.ws English Dictionary

frogmarch

frogmarch verb: to march or force a person forward while holding their arms from behind or the side, as a prisoner.

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To march or force a person forward while holding their arms from behind or the side, as a prisoner.
    • 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.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, archived from the original on 01 Aug 2024
    Synonyms:
    frog-walk
  2. (figuratively, transitive) To force a person forward against their will.
    • The wind frogmarched me at a run into the house.1940, Thomas Firbank, I Bought a Mountain
  3. (dated, transitive) To carry a person face-down with one person holding each limb.
  4. (transitive) To forcibly relocate a person, especially in a degrading or humiliating manner.

Noun

frogmarch (plural frogmarches)

  1. (transitive) The process of frogmarching a person.

Synonyms of frogmarch

Forms of frogmarch

Verb
third-person singular presentfrogmarches
present participlefrogmarching
past participlefrogmarched
pastfrogmarched
alternative formfrog march
alternative formfrog-march
alternative formfrog's march
Noun
pluralfrogmarches

Origin of frogmarch

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

Questions about frogmarch

What does frogmarch mean?
Frogmarch means to march or force a person forward while holding their arms from behind or the side, as a prisoner.
What part of speech is frogmarch?
Frogmarch can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of frogmarch?
The past tense of frogmarch is frogmarched.

Words near frogmarch in the dictionary

  1. froglike
  2. frogling
  3. froglings
  4. frogly
  5. frogman
  6. frogmarch
  7. frogmarched
  8. frogmarches
  9. frogmarching
  10. frogmen
  11. Frogmore

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frogmarch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “frogmarch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/frogmarch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.