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

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

The Revolutionary Guard has an estimated 190,000 active duty personnel, or nearly 10 times the size of Hezbollah’s force before the 2024 Israeli offensive.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 28, 2026

Kelly could even be recalled to active duty, then court-martialed, an act that would remove his military status entirely and even land the senator in prison.

From Slate ● Jan. 13, 2026

Some western estimates put its active duty contingent in the hundreds of thousands, still a very substantial total.

From BBC ● Jan. 13, 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