Villeinage

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A hereditary status in which individuals worked the land for a noble, subject to obligations and restrictions, in a system common in the feudal era
2. The condition of being tied to a lord's estate, where laborers provided service in exchange for subsistence and security
3. A social state in the medieval period where peasants were legally obligated to serve a lord and cultivate his land ; the state of being legally attached to a lord's property, requiring labor or services for support

Etymology: Behind this term is the Latin "villa," a farm or country estate. Medieval Latin turned "villa" into "villanus," a man who worked on such an estate, and Old French made it "vilein." The English word for the condition of being a villein, with the suffix "-age" marking a status or condition, came from the same Old French and Anglo-Norman forms. "Villain" is a doublet of "villein," coming from the same Latin source by a separate route. The two words split apart in meaning. "Villein" stayed a term for a bound peasant, while "villain" slid from "low-born farm worker" to "wicked person," a shift that reflects how the feudal class hierarchy came to look to those above it.

Synonyms: serfdom, bondage