active duty

American  

noun

Military.

1. the status of full-time service.

   on active duty.

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active duty Idioms  

1. Full-time service, as in Julian is 81, but he still comes to the office every day and is very much on active duty. This term comes from the military, where it stands in opposition to reserve, which refers to troops still in the military but not actively engaged. It is occasionally transferred to civilian matters as well. [First half of 1800s]

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

active duty

There are around 30,000 U.S. military personnel on active duty on Okinawa, an island around 1,000 miles from Tokyo.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026

Shaw, then still on active duty, led the American delegation.

From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026

In 2011, Dimon named him head of the mortgage department—replacing Scharf—after former Marine Captain Jonathan Rowles testified before Congress about how JPMorgan had illegally foreclosed on his house while he was serving on active duty.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026

Van Dyke has been an active duty soldier in the US since 2008 and has been a master sergeant with the US Army Special Forces since 2023, according to the indictment.

From BBC ● Apr. 28, 2026

With more than a million troops on active duty, about five percent of the country’s population is in uniform, compared with about half of one percent in the United States.

From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden

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