servitude

UK/ˈsɜːvɪtʃuːd/US/ˈsərvəˌt(j)ud/

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,707 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: servitudes

Servitude is the state of being forced to serve another. Penal servitude, a life of servitude, freed from servitude.

Penal servitude was a British punishment of hard labour, abolished in 1948. In modern human rights law, servitude is prohibited alongside slavery and forced labour, and it covers conditions somebody cannot leave even where nobody claims to own them.

Definitions of servitude

1nounservitudeThe state of being forced to serve another.C1
“The girls were sold into servitude and forced to work without pay.”

servitude is a state.

Where it comes from

Latin servitudo comes from servus, a slave. Serve and servant are relatives.

Proto-Indo-European
*ser- (guard)
Latin
servitūdō
Middle French
servitude
English, today
servitude

From Middle French servitude, from Latin servitūdō, from Latin servus (“slave”). Equivalent to serve + itude.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

servitude in the wild

The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution made slavery and involuntary servitude illegal, except as punishment for a crime.
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Involuntary servitude is not dependent upon compensation or its amount.
Involuntary servitude
Prison labour is often referred to as involuntary servitude.
Involuntary servitude
Bacon's Rebellion shaped the way that servitude and slavery worked in the South.
Southern Colonies
However, covenants and equitable servitudes in most of the jurisdictions across North America are slightly different.
Equitable servitude

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

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