Vilenage

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The servile status of a feudal villein, bound to labour for a lord on land held under customary tenure
2. The historical condition of a serf in medieval England, owing dues and labour to a manor lord
3. Feudal bondage in which a peasant held land from a lord in exchange for obligatory service and payments

Etymology: Its root, "villein," once described a farmer working land on a lord's estate, not a wrongdoer. The Latin "villanus" came from "villa," a country house or farm, and in medieval England a villein was a tenant bound to the lord's land, owing labour and dues. The shift from "farm worker" to "lowborn" to "scoundrel" is the same slide that later gave us "villain." "Vilenage" is a noun built on that root with the suffix "-age," which in Old French and Anglo-Norman marked a condition, collective status, or charge. In English it named the state of being a villein, or the tenure by which a villein held land, which is serfdom in practice. Its sense of base or unworthy conduct, drawn from the same moral slide, shows up in older texts as well. Modern readers rarely meet it outside the history of feudal law.

Synonyms: villainy, wickedness, villeinage

Antonyms: virtue, nobility