https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/voluntold/
Where does voluntold come from?
Being volunteered for something is already sarcastic, as volunteering is so supposed to be done of one’s own will. Voluntold ups the irony by combining volunteer with told, as in being told what to do.
Voluntold is widely associated with the military and may indeed have its origins in military slang. Embrace the Suck, a 2017 book of military slang, suggests that soldiers may have been saying it since the 1970s, but it seems voluntold really caught on in the 2000s. In a 2004 interview with KoreAm Journal, a soldier noted that some volunteered for their assignments while others were voluntold. A 2014 Business Insider article listed voluntold as a word that “only military people will know.”
For all these military connections, voluntold started to reach mainstream culture in the early 1990s. A forum post from 1992 discusses members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (think Renaissance Fairs) being voluntold to work on a book project. The military and Ren Fair worlds seem pretty far apart, but who knows? Maybe some of those jousters used to be lance corporals. (Rimshot, please.) Regardless, voluntold seems to have really hit its stride in the 2010s, when Google searches for the term began trending steadily upwards.
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