serfdom

noun

serf·​dom ˈsərf-dəm 

-təm

: the condition of a tenant farmer bound to a hereditary plot of land and to the will of a landlord : the state or fact of being a serf

Despite obvious personal repugnance for serfdom, she enhanced the powers of nobles to demand more labor from their ill-treated and unorganized serfs.

—Carol S. Leonard

Servitude stretched from serfdom in Russia to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean to the indigenous slave systems in Africa that supplied both the Arabian and Atlantic trades.

—Adam Hochschild

Examples of serfdom in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Russian officers still treated their peasant soldiers as little better than serfs (and serfdom would not be abolished in Russia for another 50 years). —Antony Beevor, Foreign Affairs, 29 Dec. 2022

That book, Caliban and the Witch, traces the emergence of witch hunts throughout medieval Western Europe amid the transition from serfdom to proto-capitalism. —Hazlitt, 4 Sep. 2024

Johnson envisioned a postwar order in which former slaves would transition into permanent serfdom, destined for labor but no independent economic life and no place in politics. —David W. Blight, Foreign Affairs, 8 Dec. 2020

As the Big Three continue to drive down the road to serfdom, car production will continue in the United States. —The Editors, National Review, 18 Sep. 2023

Word History

Etymology

serf + -dom

First Known Use

1837, in the meaning defined above