: a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to determine one's course of action or way of life
2
: a right by which something (such as a piece of land) owned by one person is subject to a specified use or enjoyment by another
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Servitude is slavery or anything resembling it. The entire black population of colonial America lived in permanent servitude. And millions of the whites who populated this country arrived in "indentured servitude", obliged to pay off the cost of their journey with several years of labor. Servitude comes in many forms, of course: in the bad old days of the British navy, it was said that the difference between going to sea and going to jail was that you were less likely to drown in jail.
the Fugitive Slave Act had the effect of returning enslaved people who had made it to freedom in the North to a brutal life of servitude in the South
Recent Examples on the WebA century and a half ago, in the 1860s, the countries’ leaders—President Abraham Lincoln and Czar Alexander II—enjoyed a warm rapport and a common purpose: ending servitude in their respective nations. Frederic J. Frommer, Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Aug. 2022 The flight from servitude, even from an identity, involves spycraft, too. Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker, 8 Aug. 2022 For many years, prosecutions based on alleged violations of the 13th Amendment — passed in 1865 to outlaw slavery and involuntary servitude — focused on peonage cases, the use of financial debt as a loophole to enslave workers.San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 July 2022 In the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood said the measure will have a disparate impact on women as opposed to men, and violates the right to bodily integrity, involuntary servitude, as well as the right to privacy. Kelly Mccleary, CNN, 27 June 2022 Some speak of robot slaves, artificial servants, AI servitude, and the like. Lance Eliot, Forbes, 21 June 2022 Teweret asks no long-term servitude of her subjects, and so Layla agrees to become the goddess’s avatar, so long as the possession is temporary. Lauren Puckett-pope, ELLE, 6 May 2022 Another who asked if involuntary servitude was racist. Roy S. Johnson | Rjohnson@al.com, al, 17 Mar. 2022 For instance, Boris Grekov, director of Moscow’s Russian History Institute, had seen his son sentenced to penal servitude and, in terror, made wide-ranging concessions to the Stalinist line, writing books and papers to order. Richard Cohen, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Mar. 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
Middle English, "slavery, bondage, feudal allegiance," borrowed from Anglo-French & Late Latin; Anglo-French servitute, borrowed from Late Latin servitūdin-, servitūdō "condition of being a slave," from Latin servus "slave" + -i--i- + -tūdin-, -tūdō-tude — more at serve entry 1