serf

IPA: sˈɝf

A partially free peasant of a low hereditary class, attached like a slave to the land owned by a feudal lord and required to perform labour, enjoying minimal legal or customary rights.
A similar agricultural labourer in 18th and 19th century Europe.
(strategy games) A worker unit.

Examples of "serf" in Sentences

A serf was a person who did not own his own labor.
This formula she abolished, and boasted that she had cast out the word serf from the
Welsh slaves; indeed, in Anglo-Saxon, the word serf and Welshman are used almost interchangeably as equivalent synonyms.
But even if you call the serf a beast of the field, he was not what we have tried to make the town workman -- a beast with no field.
The firing of a serf was a serious business; the chances were that that serf would not be able to get another position, and would have to leave the planet.
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The relationship between master and slave, or between fuedal lord and serf, is clear and obvious; the market, while permitting far more efficient use of labor, also makes it harder to see.
Well, that was the case in the 10th, 11th century, and that is why the word -- that's how the word slave originated, because the original Latin word servus, for a slave, lost its utility because it was applied to serfs and it became the word we now call serf, and so when you needed a word for slaves, got to find another one that was identified with this group.