MEANING
1. A condition of having little or no freedom while being required to serve or obey others.
2. A legal right allowing specified use or enjoyment of property owned by someone else.
Use it for
describing forced service or subjection; showing dependence that removes meaningful choice; portraying a character’s loss of personal freedom; contrasting service freely chosen with service imposedNames a condition of constrained freedom, not just hard work, and separates that condition from an unrelated property right. Writing functions: Characterization / Constrained freedom.
Words that belong together
- involuntary servitude
- penal servitude
- a life of servitude
On the page
The promise of wages had concealed a life of servitude from which none of them could easily escape.
She called it duty; he had begun to think of it as servitude.
The deed preserved a servitude allowing passage to the river.
The dispute concerned the extent of a servitude, not ownership of the field itself.
Word forms
- Base
- servitude
Usage notes
Usually an uncountable noun for subjection: servitude. The property-law sense is countable: a servitude; plural servitudes. Register: formal. Commonness: uncommon (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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