One scene holds the whole word. A group of men walks into a port town, takes hold of whoever they find in the street, and marches him onto a ship. The man never agreed to go, and nobody asked him. Everything else the word does is that same scene, either told as history or shrunk down to the size of an ordinary favour.
The name says what the thing is: press plus gang, the gang that presses people into going. The word carries its own picture on the outside.
這個名字本身就說明了它是什麼：press（逼）加上 gang（一夥人），也就是「逼人去的那一夥人」。畫面直接寫在字面上。
Wiktionary entry supplied in this packet (press-gang, noun and verb): etymology_text = 'From press + gang.'
From the picture
比喻：被盧到只好答應
把港口那個畫面整個縮小，搬到日常生活裡。沒有人真的被押走，只是有人一直盧你，你推不掉，最後還是去搬椅子、去顧攤位、去湊人數打球。說話的人是故意用這麼重的字來講這麼小的事，聽起來就有誇張的笑點——這也是為什麼它被標成 informal，而且多半用在家人朋友之間。
verb · C1
To keep pushing someone until they agree to do a job they did not want to do. It is used in a light, informal way about ordinary tasks, and often the person is not really being forced at all.
硬拉去做
noun · C2
In the past, a group of men who walked round a town or port, took hold of young men by force, and made them join the crew of a ship, usually a navy ship.
抓伕隊
verb · C2
In the past, to take a man off the street by force and make him work as a sailor on a ship, usually a navy ship. The word is used when people talk about that time, and it is almost always passive.
強拉當水手