Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Serf   /sərf/   Listen
noun
Serf  n.  A servant or slave employed in husbandry, and in some countries attached to the soil and transferred with it, as formerly in Russia. "In England, at least from the reign of Henry II, one only, and that the inferior species (of villeins), existed... But by the customs of France and Germany, persons in this abject state seem to have been called serfs, and distinguished from villeins, who were only bound to fixed payments and duties in respect of their lord, though, as it seems, without any legal redress if injured by him."
Synonyms: Serf, Slave. A slave is the absolute property of his master, and may be sold in any way. A serf, according to the strict sense of the term, is one bound to work on a certain estate, and thus attached to the soil, and sold with it into the service of whoever purchases the land.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Serf" Quotes from Famous Books



... seen the old fossil prints of feudalism. The law relating to woman tends to make every family a barony, a monarchy, or a despotism, of which the husband is the baron, king, or despot, and the wife the dependent, the serf, or slave. That this is not always the fact, is not due to the law, but to the enlarged humanity which spurns the narrow limits of its rules; for if the husband choose, he has his wife as firmly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Sellers of linen thread were called in Flanders, "mulquiniers"; and that no doubt was the trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed from a state of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown misfortune had again reduced his present descendant to the condition of a serf, with the addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders and its linen-trade was epitomized in this old man, often called, by way of euphony, Mulquinier. He was not without originality, either of character or appearance. His face ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... Bennett To-day Benjamin R. C. Low To Arcady Charles Buxton Going Wild Wishes Ethel M. Hewitt "Because of You" Sophia Almon Hensley Then Rose Terry Cooke The Missive Edmund Gosse Plymouth Harbor Mrs. Ernest Radford The Serf's Secret William Vaughn Moody "O, Inexpressible as Sweet" George Edward Woodberry The Cyclamen Arlo Bates The West-Country Lover Alice Brown "Be Ye in Love with April-Tide" Clinton Scollard Unity Alfred Noyes The Queen William Winter A Lover's Envy Henry Van Dyke Star Song Robert Underwood ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... children are not his. His labour is another's. He, and all that appertain to him, are the absolute property of his rulers. He is governed, bought, sold, punished, executed, by laws to which he never gave his assent, and by rulers whom he never chose. He is not a serf merely, with half the rights of men like the subjects of despotic Russia; but a native slave, stripped of every right which God and nature gave him, and which the high spirit of our revolution declared inalienable which he himself could not surrender, and which man could not take from him. ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... Woman is held politically to have no existence; (2) civilly, she is a minor; (3) in marriage she is a serf; (4) in labor she is made inferior and robbed of her earnings; (5) in public instruction she is sacrificed to man; (6) out of marriage, answers to the faults committed by both; (7) as a mother is deprived of her right to her children; (8) she is only ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various


More quotes...



Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com