Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Serfdom   Listen
Serfdom

noun
1.
The state of a serf.  Synonyms: serfhood, vassalage.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Serfdom" Quotes from Famous Books



... will do this, I doubt not, for in my heart of hearts, I believe with Henry Clay that "Before you can repress the tendencies to liberty, or the tendencies to absolute emancipation from every form of serfdom, you must go back to the era of our independence and muzzle the cannon which thunders its joyous return; you must penetrate the human soul and eradicate there the love of liberty." Then, and not till then, can you stifle the ennobling aspiration of the American Negro for ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... "But apathy, and serfdom, and kinghood, and dominion, drain the fountain of its living springs, and the soul becomes like the plummet of lead, whose only tendency is to hide itself in subaqueous mud and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... New England and New York the Negroes were merely house servants or farm hands, and were treated neither better nor worse than servants in general in those days. Between these two extremes, the system of slavery varied from a mild serfdom in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to an aristocratic caste system in Maryland ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... people. During the first week of his reign he abolished torture in trials, made the administration of law more equitable, instituted a limited freedom for the press, [2] and extended religious toleration. [3] He also partially abolished serfdom on the royal domains, and tried to uplift the peasantry and citizen classes, but in this he met with bitter opposition from the nobles of his realm. He built roads, canals, and bridges, encouraged skilled artisans to settle in his dominions, developed agriculture ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... perception, which in its normal state had felt its subjection to the Will to which it owed its existence. In this manner the organ of perception was placed in an abnormal sympathetic condition. It endeavoured to free itself permanently and finally from its disgraceful serfdom, and this it at last achieved in the perfect negation of the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... courtesies and make bows to the seated royalties, who, as a rule, do not even take the trouble to glance at those engaged in this servile tribute to small royalty. I suppose that the excuse for this is that it is an old custom. But so is serfdom! ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... the courtiers set out to subdue the untutored savageness of nature with a paper preamble and diagrams and rules and inhibitions, and orders of nobility and a college of heralds, and institutions of slavery and serfdom, and definitions of freeholders and landgraves, caciques and palatines; and specifications of fifths for proprietors, fifths for the nobility, and the rest for the common herd, who were never to be permitted to be anything but the common ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... of northern Andalusia, fertile irrigated plains, dry olive-land stretching up to the rocky waterless mountains where the mines are. In Azorin's crisp phrases and in the long ornate periods of the editor, the serfdom and the squalor and the heroic hope of these peasants and miners and artisans became vivid to me for the first time. Occasionally the compositor, a boy of about fifteen with a brown ink-smudged face, would poke his head in the door and shout: "It's ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... we saw rustling their parchments and chinking their silver marks in the ears of Abbot Sampson in Richard's time, it is hard to say. Like all the greater revolutions of society, this advance was a silent one. The more galling and oppressive instances of serfdom seem to have slipped unconsciously away. Some, like the eel-fishery, were commuted for an easy rent; others, like the slavery of the fullers and the toll of flax, simply disappeared. No one could tell when the retainers of the abbey came to lose their exemption from local ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... category of a prisoner of war. He has not willed his own bondage; while you, my grocer, and butcher, and baker— ay, and you, my fine city merchant, who fondly fancy yourself a freeman—ye are voluntary in your serfdom; ye are loyal to a political juggle that annually robs ye of half your year's industry; that annually requires some hundred thousands of your class to be sloughed off into exile, lest your whole body should gangrene and die. And all this without even a ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... gravely I say that I know no captivity so sorrowful as that of an artist doing, consciously, bad work for pay. It is the serfdom of the finest gifts—of all that should lead and master men, offering itself to be spit upon, and that for a bribe. There is much serfdom, in Europe, of speakers and writers, but they only sell words; ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... influence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with the spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the importance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the accomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which, left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake, Alexander II. In the history of emancipation in our own country evidences of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... last set itself in earnest to the work of legislation. In one night, the ever memorable 4th of August, it decreed the total abolition of feudalism. In one night it abolished tithes to the church, provincial privileges, feudal rights, serfdom, the law of primogeniture, seigniorial dues, and the gabelle, or tax on salt. Mirabeau was not present, being absent on his pleasures. These, however, seldom interfered with his labors, which were herculean, from seven in the morning till eleven at night. He had two sides to his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord



Words linked to "Serfdom" :   thraldom, serf, slavery, bondage, thralldom, thrall



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com