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Servitude   Listen
noun
Servitude  n.  
1.
The state of voluntary or compulsory subjection to a master; the condition of being bound to service; the condition of a slave; slavery; bondage; hence, a state of slavish dependence. "You would have sold your king to slaughter, His princes and his peers to servitude." "A splendid servitude;... for he that rises up early, and goes to bed late, only to receive addresses, is really as much abridged in his freedom as he that waits to present one."
2.
Servants, collectively. (Obs.) "After him a cumbrous train Of herds and flocks, and numerous servitude."
3.
(Law) A right whereby one thing is subject to another thing or person for use or convenience, contrary to the common right. Note: The object of a servitude is either to suffer something to be done by another, or to omit to do something, with respect to a thing. The easements of the English correspond in some respects with the servitudes of the Roman law. Both terms are used by common law writers, and often indiscriminately. The former, however, rather indicates the right enjoyed, and the latter the burden imposed.
Penal servitude. See under Penal.
Personal servitude (Law), that which arises when the use of a thing is granted as a real right to a particular individual other than the proprietor.
Predial servitude (Law), that which one estate owes to another estate. When it related to lands, vineyards, gardens, or the like, it is called rural; when it related to houses and buildings, it is called urban.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Servitude" Quotes from Famous Books



... interests are so far from being the same as those of the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of OUR wretchedness; their tyranny of OUR servitude. If they had the superior knowledge ascribed to them (which they have not) it would only render them so much more formidable; and from Gods would convert them into Devils. The whole dramatic moral of Coriolanus is that those who have little shall have ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... very proud of our Wellingsford Hospital. It is the largest and the wealthiest in the county. We owe it to the uneasy conscience of a Wellingsford man, a railway speculator in the forties, who, having robbed widows and orphans and, after trial at the Old Bailey, having escaped penal servitude by the skin of his teeth, died in the odour of sanctity, and the possessor of a colossal fortune in the year eighteen sixty-three. This worthy gentleman built the hospital and endowed it so generously that ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... savouring too much of the Tartar servitude, was that recorded by Peter Heylin in his Little Description of the Great World (Oxford, 1629), who says: "It is the custom over all Muscovie, that a maid in time of wooing sends to that suitor whom she chooseth for her husband ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... bound now and forever to this dangerous and perfidious creature," she thought. "I am no longer my own mistress; I belong to her. When she commands, I must obey. I must be the slave of her every caprice—and she has forty years of humiliation and servitude to avenge." ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... wicked world, Bertie was astray; and perhaps God has kept her alive, intending she should fulfil her mission years hence, by bringing him out of the snares of temptation, back into the fold of Christ's redeemed. Five years of penal servitude to ransom his ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... yit lay thair ane uther serpent lurking in the breist of our adversareis, as this day, (prayse to God,) is planelie oppinnit to all that list behald, to witt, to bring yow and us baith under the perpetuall servitude of strangearis; for we being appointit, as ye knaw, tuiching religioun to be reassonit in the Counsall at the day affixt, and na occatioun maid to brek the same on our syde, (as is weill knawin,) yitt come thair furth writtingis and complayntis, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... from prosperity to ruin. The civilian's life has been one of varied activities, and becomes one of almost unrelieved monotony. He is in most cases quite unused to military control, and feels himself degraded to a kind of servitude. Used to a separate and individual life, he is forced into contact, day and night, with others not of his own choice, and often antipathetic to him. He finds himself deprived of every vestige of privacy, and his thoughts revolve often round chances gone, work lost, ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... the thousandth time to the consideration of the main problem. What were the syndicate people doing? Was Mr. Coburn liable to prosecution, to penal servitude? Was it possible that by some twist of the legal mind, some misleading circumstantial evidence, Miss Coburn—Madeleine—could be incriminated? Oh, if he but knew what was wrong, that he might be able to help! If he could but get her out of it, and for her sake Mr. Coburn! ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... occurred to those who have studied the inner life and meaning of these old representations,—owed to them, perhaps, homilies of wisdom, as well as visions of poetry,—that the introduction of the ox and the ass, those symbols of animal servitude and inferiority, might be otherwise translated;—that their pathetic dumb recognition of the Saviour of the world might be interpreted as extending to them also a participation in his mission of love and mercy;—that since to the lower ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... great divisions, however, are the White and the Black. The latter class, themselves the owners of land, claim that all the White were originally slaves, and that those who are now free have escaped at some previous period from servitude. Men, as usual among such tribes, are scarcely distinguishable from the ordinary Han Ren. It is the women, with their peculiar head-dress and picturesque skirts, who maintain the distinguishing features of the race. For the most part, the Nou-su are not idolaters; ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... when they are grown mature In wisdom, and with philosophic deeps Familiar, serve to emancipate the rest! Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone To reverence what is ancient, and can plead A course of long observance for its use, That even servitude, the worst of ills, Because delivered down from sire to son, Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing. But is it fit, or can it bear the shock Of rational discussion, that a man, Compounded and made up like other men Of elements tumultuous, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... enlist or pay his taxes. Behind the simple ostensible spectacle of Italy recovering the unredeemed Italy of the Trentino and East Venetia, goes on another drama. Has Italy been sinking into something rather hard to define called "economic slavery"? Is she or is she not escaping from that magical servitude? Before this question has been under discussion for a minute comes a name—for a time I was really quite unable to decide whether it is the name of the villain in the piece or of the maligned heroine, or a secret society or a gold mine, or a pestilence or a delusion—the ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... will, no doubt, be a new curiosity for the more daring among Cook's tourists. The workshops are supplied with mechanics by a simple expedient; hopeless specimens of English malefactors, condemned to penal servitude for the term of their natural life, are relegated to this region, a kind of grim humour characterising the selection. The most hideous convicts are chosen, and those most corresponding in outward appearance to the ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... Philip Crawford, stroking his strong, square chin. "I don't care much for these spectacular detectives. Your man, I suppose, would glance at the gold bag, and at once announce the age, sex, and previous condition of servitude ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... I do,' Racksole resumed. 'Now listen. At the best, you will be given up to the police. At the worst, I shall deal with you myself. With the police you may have a chance—you may get off with twenty years' penal servitude, because, though it is absolutely certain that you murdered Reginald Dimmock, it would be a little difficult to prove the case against you. But with me you would have no chance whatever. I have a few questions to put to you, and it will depend on how you answer them whether ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... interested, a man can do any thing. Many a youth would think it hard to indent himself a slave for fourteen years. But let him be over head and ears in love, and with such a beauteous sweetheart as Rachael, and he will think no more of fourteen years' servitude than young Jacob did. Well, now, this is exactly my case. I am in love; and my sweetheart is LIBERTY. Be that heavenly nymph my companion, and these wilds and woods shall have charms beyond London ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... their own rights and respect for mankind. Even emigrants, in America, soon learn to cast aside their rough prejudices as regards caste, for the proud affability of the aristocratic, the vanity of the small citizen, the want of confidence and ease in the mechanic, the slavish servitude and snappish insolence of liveried servants, find in America no place. Man is there esteemed only as man—only ability gains honor—and where that is, and there alone, can true nobility be found. No one there inquires who a man is, or who were his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... we all do that, in theory: then glide into domestic servitude and like it, and find it ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... persons found on [or] being within any place occupied by rebel forces, and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... is that Dictionary of National Biography?" asked John Arniston of the boy. The precious letter for which he had risked penal servitude and the cat in the prisons of his country for robbery of the Imperial mails (accompanied with violence), was blazing on the fire. Then, with professional readiness, John Arniston wrote a column and a half upon ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... In his father's house, and while enjoying a short period of well-earned leave, he was arrested upon a charge of forgery and embezzlement; and, after a short period of imprisonment, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to a period of seven years' penal servitude! Vain were all his protestations of innocence; vain his counsel's representation that there was no earthly motive for such a crime on the part of his client; the evidence adduced against him was so overwhelmingly complete and convincing—although the greater part of it was circumstantial—that ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... one danger is not that we may meet devils, but that we may worship them. In other words, the danger is one always associated, by the instinct of folk-lore, with forests; it is enchantment, or the fixed loss of oneself in some unnatural captivity or spiritual servitude. And in the evolution of Germanism, from Hoffmann to Hauptmann, we do see this growing tendency to take horror seriously, which is diabolism. The German begins to have an eerie abstract sympathy with the force and fear he ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... how inevitable these big wholesale ways of doing things, these organizations and close social co-operations, have become unless there is to be a social disintegration and set back, and he had also brought himself and her to realize how easily they may develop into a new servitude, how high and difficult is the way towards methods of association that will ensure freedom and permit people to live fine individual lives. Every step towards organization raises a crop of vices peculiar to itself, fresh developments of the egotism and greed and vanity ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... half-naked, wild as little goblins, were playing both in and out of the water. Here and there lounged a young girl, with a baby at her back, whose bright eyes glanced, as if born into a world of courage and of joy, instead of ignominious servitude and slow decay. Some girls were cutting wood, a little way from me, talking and laughing, in the low musical tone, so charming in the Indian women. Many bark canoes were upturned upon the beach, and, ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... should] forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent." These articles of compact were in general similar to the bills of rights in State Constitutions; but one of them found no parallel in any State Constitution. Article VI reads: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This has been hailed as a farsighted, humanitarian measure, and it is quite true that many of the leading men, in the South as well as in the North, were looking forward to ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... between free tenants and villains, using this word, as is customary, to include all those who were legally in servitude, was not a very clearly marked one. Their economic position was often so similar that the classes shaded into one another. But the villain was, as has been seen, usually burdened with much heavier services. He was ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... accomplishment of the separation of the races. Because, until the colored men, who are now free, shall afford the evidence that freedom is best for the race, those held in slavery cannot escape from their condition of servitude. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... long sighed, and amidst the fearless security of preparations for a festival, is butchered, according to the expression of Homer, "like an ox in the stall," slain by his faithless wife, his throne usurped by her worthless seducer, and his children consigned to banishment or to hopeless servitude. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... spectacle. The dogmas and traditions of half a century snapped like threads, when it became their office to constrain a penchant. Ethnologists and politicians were equally ready to find out that the negro was fit for nothing but enforced servitude. Parsons, marchionesses, and maiden aunts received simultaneous enlightenment as to Christian truth, and discovered that slavery was not prohibited, but was even countenanced, in the Bible. The inference was inevitable: what Moses did not condemn in Jews thirty-three centuries ago ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... extravagance, and, moreover, with irresistible promptness. It is then, too, that inequality of conditions makes itself more rudely felt; riches, might, independence, every advantage and every right present themselves every instant to the gaze of misery, weakness, and servitude. The inhabitants of fiefs could not find consolation in the bosom of tranquillity; incessantly mixed up in the quarrels of their lord, a prey to his neighbors' devastations, they led a life still more precarious and still more restless ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... asked. "Perfectly so, sir," was the answer. "That will do, my boy; you can go." The trial I thought so much about was over. Marshall and I had now a few shillings handed over to us, and were fast bound for our agreed-on term of servitude, unless at any time we might be able to buy ourselves out of the army. For the next three days we had nothing to do but eat our meals and walk about till five o'clock, when we had to appear at the rendezvous; that is, the house where ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... laudable Distinction of the Sorrowful was lost, and Mourning is now worn by Heirs and Widows. You see nothing but Magnificence and Solemnity in the Equipage of the Relict, and an Air [of [1]] Release from Servitude in the Pomp of a Son who has lost a wealthy Father. This Fashion of Sorrow is now become a generous Part of the Ceremonial between Princes and Sovereigns, who in the Language of all Nations are stiled Brothers to each other, and put on the Purple upon the Death ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... result. Laban also was alienated, whereupon Jacob fled, with his wives and children and cattle. Laban pursued, overtook him, and after an angry altercation, in which Jacob recounted his wrongs during twenty years of servitude, and Laban claimed every thing as his—daughters, children and cattle, they made a covenant on a heap of stones not to pass either across it for the other's harm, and Laban returned to his home and Jacob ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... present the population of the Netherlands thus followed careers widely different, during the long period of the Roman power in these parts of Europe. While those of the high lands and the Batavians distinguished themselves by a long-continued course of military service or servitude, those of the plains improved by degrees their social condition, and fitted themselves for a place in civilized Europe. The former received from Rome great marks of favor in exchange for their freedom. The latter, rejecting the honors and distinctions lavished on their ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... laugh. "But here is the hitch, sir, we cannot do it. The king has the power to hold us in his fetters; and this fine lady, Madame Freedom, of whom you say that she is our mother, lets it come to pass, notwithstanding that her sons are bound down in servitude and abasement." ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... corporations owing allegiance to some great power would now possess these countries. They would bristle with forts and police, and their populations would be in a state of absolute political and of quasi-economic servitude. They might today be more orderly and perhaps wealthier, but unless the fundamental American belief in democracy and self-government is wrong they would be infinitely farther from their true goal, which involves the working out ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... of powders you was distributing; and whether you had a good sale' — 'Sale, sir! (cried Clinker) I hope I shall never be base enough to sell for gold and silver, what freely comes of God's grace. I distributed nothing, an like your honour, but a word of advice to my fellows in servitude and sin.' 'Advice! concerning what?' 'Concerning profane swearing, an please your honour; so horrid and shocking, that it made my hair stand on end.' 'Nay, if thou can'st cure them Of that disease, I shall think thee a wonderful doctor indeed' 'Why not cure them, my good master? the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... proof that he was miles away from Innesmore Mansions on Monday night. Now, let's see how we can get him to show his hand a little more openly. How would this be? 'Y. M.— Terms can be arranged. J. C. F.' The terms are, of course, that the whole gang be hanged or sent to penal servitude and deported." ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... not only in their private interest, but again in the interest of the public, not merely through prudence, but also through equity, all should not be indistinguishably restricted to the same mechanical pursuit, to the same manual labour, to the same indefinite servitude of soul ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... Buckram's were of a very shady order. Dirty-shirted, sloggering, baggy-breeched, slangey-gaitered fellows, with the word 'gin' indelibly imprinted on their faces. Peter Leather, the head man, was one of the fallen angels of servitude. He had once driven a duke—the Duke of Dazzleton—having nothing whatever to do but dress himself and climb into his well-indented richly fringed throne, with a helper at each horse's head to 'let go' at a nod from his broad laced three-cornered hat. Then having got in his cargo (or rubbish, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... manual labor has been diminished, and every physical force both magnified and economized, how unstatesmanlike is the view which regards a human being as a bundle of muscles and bones merely, with no destiny but ignorance, servitude, and poverty! ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... My term of penal servitude expired on Sunday; and in some respects I came out of it better than I had gone in. For Mr Hashford had the charge of all detained boys, and he, good-hearted, Henniker-dreading usher that he was, had spent the three days in drilling me hard in ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... Church tithed and pillaged, for the benefit of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles. Acts also exist legalizing negro and Indian slavery. There are within the Territory at the present time not more than fifty or sixty negroes, but there are several hundred Indians, held in servitude. These are mostly Pyides, into whose country some of the Utah bands make periodical forays, capturing their young women and children, whom they sell to the Navajoes in New Mexico, as well as to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... Romansh, which the whole language bears, seems to be a badge of Roman servitude, yet the conquest of that nation, if ever effected, could not have produced a great alteration in a language which must already have been so similar to their own; and its general name may as well be attributed to the pacific as to the hostile Romans. But ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.

... their penal den, within this fortress, to their appointed toil. There were many old men among these culprits; and their great age rather sought and met with sympathy, than excited detestation of the crime that had brought them to servitude; and, perhaps, it would be a wiser enactment of the Norwegian Government to forego the system of task-work thus publicly, and adopt some other method of punishment less exposed to the popular eye; for, I believe, the spectacle of an old man submitted to daily penal ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... delivered from slavery, and the wretched state of a Virginia sold servant; I had notion enough in my mind of the hardship of the servant or slave, because I had felt it, and worked through it; I remembered it as a state of labour and servitude, hardship and suffering. But the other shocked my very nature, chilled my blood, and turned the very soul within me; the thought of it was like reflections upon hell and the damned spirits; it struck ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... maid had, in fact, a terror of any kind of tie. Her cousin had offered her a room in her own house—Lisbeth suspected the halter of domestic servitude; several times the Baron had found a solution of the difficult problem of her marriage; but though tempted in the first instance, she would presently decline, fearing lest she should be scorned for her want of education, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... and at that moment Grace also laughed. The strong current of her purpose, the sense of escape from the bitter servitude of the past week, and the wild hope of final expiation through the chances she was tempting gave her a buoyancy long unfelt. She laughed in gayety of heart as she helped the young man draw his dory down the sand, and then took her place at one end ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... servitude slips from me; once more I am free and my own. The inexhaustible life that is behind all visible things, constantly flowing in upon us when we keep the channels open, recreates whatever was noblest and truest in me. With Nature, I believe; ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... Everything in the vast universe is connected with them. Whoever should delay their course a moment would make the earth reel. Night would become day, the rivers would return to their sources. People would walk on their heads instead of their feet, joy would be transformed to sorrow and power to servitude. Therefore, child, the full moon has a different effect from the waxing or waning one during the other twenty-nine nights of the month. To ask of one what belongs to another is to expect an answer from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... A surviving custom of servitude has consigned the mass of negroes to the lower pursuits of labor. Even at this it would be possible to live, for there would be work. In the North, however, such employment has been monopolized by foreign immigrants clearing Ellis Island at the rate of more than a million a year. ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... through in that sentimentality. To me chivalry means all that is narrow, cruel, and rapacious in man. The philandering knights were sensual boobies, the simpering dames soulless wantons. Life meant simply the rule of the strong, the slaughter of the weak. Servitude was its law and robbery its methods. Have you ever traveled in out-of-the-way places in Germany, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... against the traffic. The Congregational churches of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut declared against slavery and asked the legislatures to adopt the Jewish law, emancipating all slaves whatsoever at the end of the tenth year of servitude. A little later, slavery was made illegal in all the New England colonies, Pennsylvania at length remembered William Penn, who had freed all his slaves in his will, while the German churches of that State began to expel all members who were known to have bought or ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... in general—and was off. I never saw him again till after his death. First came the trial, and Dick Boyce got three months' imprisonment, on a minor count, while several others of the precious lot he was mixed up with came in for penal servitude. There was some technical flaw in the evidence with regard to him, and the clever lawyers they put on made the most of it; but we all thought, and society thought, that Dick was morally as bad as any of them. Then the papers got hold of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... commerce—were discussed at some length in two preceding chapters, and an attempt was also made to show why, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the medieval republics— surrounded by domains of hostile feudal lords, unable to free the peasants from servitude, and gradually corrupted by ideas of Roman Caesarism—were doomed to become a prey to the growing ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... Ninevite kings had lorded it over the East. There was scarcely a state in all Western Asia that had not, during this time, felt the weight of their conquering arms; scarcely a people that had not suffered their cruel punishments, or tasted the bitterness of their servitude. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... New World of this "direful spring of woes unnumbered" was promoted, in the first instance, by the good Las Casas, as the hopeful preventive of a worse evil. Touched by the spectacle of whole tribes and nations of the Indians perishing under the cruel servitude imposed upon them by the Spanish, it seemed to him a less wrong to transfer the infliction of this injustice to shoulders more able to bear it. But "man's inhumanity to man" needed no pretext of philanthropy. From the landing of the Dutch ship at Jamestown in 1619, with her ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... daily and yearly labor the great establishments they so much admired were sustained and supported. They failed to perceive that the scantily fed and half-clad operatives were not only in abject poverty, but were bound in chains of oppressive servitude for the benefit of favored classes, who were the exclusive objects of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... think she'd like to, if she dared. There's not a single photograph of him anywhere, even in her own room. Mrs. Marsh is here—you remember her, his housekeeper, the wife of the man who got penal servitude for killing a baby or something—you said she robbed him and justified her stealing because the story of the unjust steward was in the Bible! How we laughed over that! She's just the same too, gliding about all over the house and ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood

... prisoners taken in strife besides merely cutting off the phallus as a trophy; these prisoners began to have some intrinsic value. From this a change came about; the warrior instinct, however, still claimed that the vanquished, even if a slave, should still convey or carry some sign of servitude. The original idea of the ablation of the phallus was to emasculate the victim; investigation developed the idea that the same object could be accomplished by castration, an operation which also finally reached a tolerable ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... the three-headed dog Cerberus. When Hercules brought the dog to Eurystheus, the latter, pale with fright, ordered him to be set at liberty, whereupon Cerberus immediately sank into the earth. Hercules's servitude was now ended, but his great performances were not. He fought with the centaurs and giants. When his period of slavery had ended, he married Dejanira; with her he went to Trachinia. At the river Evenus he encountered the centaur Nessus. Nessus, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... briskly, for the point was a pet one with him. "I was an Oxford man myself, and I know that servitude. When I go up to Oxford now and see the girls who are being ground in the mill at Somerville, I'm heartily sorry for them. It's worse for them than for us; they miss the only part of university life that ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... becomes such if it seeks to perpetuate its authority after its mission is fulfilled. The substitution of the enslavement for the slaughter of the conquered foe was a step towards progress, as was the substitution of servitude for slavery. The formation of the Bourgeoise class was a progress from servitude. But he who at the present day should attempt to recede towards slavery and servitude, and presumptuously endeavor to perpetuate the exclusion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... the lives of great men, it is the ALL of life to narrow minds. One must needs have been a minister dismissed from power to comprehend the bitter pain which came upon Madame du Bousquier when she found herself reduced to this absolute servitude. She often got into the carriage against her will; she saw herself surrounded by servants who were distasteful to her; she no longer had the handling of her dear money,—she who had known herself free to spend money, and did ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... every Negro familiarly, and the disposition on the part of every Negro to treat every white man respectfully. But these are habits which are gradually disappearing. The breaking down of the instincts and habits of servitude and the acquisition by the masses of the Negro people of the instincts and habits of freedom have proceeded slowly but steadily. The reason the change seems to have gone on more rapidly in some cases than others is explained by the fact that at the time of emancipation 10 per cent of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... What began as a war of ideals became before long a chaos. It has had the effect not at all of minimizing the power of sex, but just as far as the deeper needs and instincts have been denied, has there been a deliberate turning on the part of the young to the reliefs of sex-excitements. The servitude of sex is one of the essential riddles of life. Personally I do not feel there is any simple solution. The conflict, broadly speaking, lies in this: our sex needs have changed very little through the ages, now we are faced with the task of adapting them to the society in which we find ourselves ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... free liberty before, and would be well likely, if we were at liberty, to do again. And we shall peradventure perceive that it were better for us to do this business than that. Now we shall have great occasion of comfort, if we consider that our servitude, though in the account of the world it seem to come by chance of war, cometh unto us yet in very deed by the provident hand of God, and that for our great good if we will take it well, both in remission of sins and also ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... sir; I marry. Once the earldom comes into my line, I shall take measures to perpetuate its remaining there. I marry, sir! I do not say that I shall love. My heart has changed mistresses too often to settle down in one servitude now, sir. But fill, I pray you, friends. This, if I mistake not, is the day whence I shall date my new fortunes; and, for that reason, hither have I invited you, that, having been so long my boon companions, you shall be the first to ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles

... came up to Shakespeare, Rowe, and Mr. Addison. Besides the many Reasons I have already given in Relation to the French, I might add, that their Language is less fit for Tragedy, and the Servitude of their Rhime enervates the Force of the Diction. And as for Our Comedies, they are so full of Lewdness, Impiety and Immorality, and of such complicated perplexed Plots, so stuffed with Comparisons and Similies, so replenished with ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... He was a native of Bideford, in Devon—my mother's county—and had been a sailor. Some years before, he, with another young man named Thomas May, had been concerned in a mutiny on board a London whale-ship, the Jason, and both men were sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude, it being believed, though not proven, that either Trenfield or May had killed one of the officers with a blow of the fist. They were, with six of their shipmates, tried at the Old Bailey, and although a Quaker gentleman, a Mr Robert Bent, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... the clubs to the armed defence of the imperilled country, and pointed with menacing hands at Bonaparte as the man who wished to overthrow the republic, and put France once more in the bonds of servitude. ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... commonly were a familiar sight. Even the shotgun was gone from over the kitchen door. She returned to the sitting-room and laid some sticks on the coals, and sat leaning toward the blaze in that sense of comradeship that is as old between man and fire as the servitude of ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... Lucien had not a word ready. They listened to the Spaniard, and looked at the two precious specimens to whom he gave his orders. What was the secret hold to which he owed the submission and servitude that were written on these two faces—one mischievously recalcitrant, the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... role, cue; province, function, lookout, department, capacity, sphere, orb, field, line; walk, walk of life; beat, round, routine; race, career. office, place, post, chargeship[obs3], incumbency, living; situation, berth, employ; service &c. (servitude) 749; engagement; undertaking &c. 676. vocation, calling, profession, cloth, faculty; industry, art; industrial arts; craft, mystery, handicraft; trade &c. (commerce) 794. exercise; work &c. (action) 680; avocation; press ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... teeming life which surrounds the great central markets of Paris. The heroine is Lisa Quenu, a daughter of Antoine Macquart (La Fortune des Rougon). She has become prosperous, and with prosperity her selfishness has increased. Her brother-in-law Florent had escaped from penal servitude in Cayenne and lived for a short time in her house, but she became tired of his presence and ultimately denounced him to the police. The book contains vivid pictures of the markets, bursting with the food of a great city, and of the vast population which lives by handling and distributing it. ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... reconstruction measure was an attempt to put the superior part of the community under the control of the inferior, these parts separated by all the prejudices of race, and by traditions of mastership on the one side and of servitude on the other. I venture to say that it was an experiment that would have failed in any community in the United States, whether it was presented as a piece ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... how abject is our race, Condemn'd to slavery and disgrace; Shall we our servitude retain, Because our sires ...
— Harrison's Amusing Picture and Poetry Book • Unknown

... this point an interpreter was brought forward in the person of an Italian slave, a good-looking middle-aged lady, who understood French, and who, during a servitude of ten years, ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... and servitude but ill accord, Friend Mopsus, and the hind is folly-fraught Who rates his lord! He's wiser far than I. To tend these ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... never was liable to those fits of blind rage which deprive a man of all power of reflection. Even when overcome with intense anger, as he sometimes was, he was always able to retain complete self-control, and therefore to realise that he would certainly be sent to penal servitude for murdering a man not in a duel; nevertheless, he'd have killed any one who insulted him, and without ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... themselves with the Hauteserres; being watched by Fouche, who sent Peyrade and Corentin to keep an eye on them, they were accused of the abduction of Malin, of which they were not guilty, and sentenced to twenty-four years of penal servitude; were pardoned by Napoleon, entered as sub-lieutenants the same cavalry regiment, and were killed together in the battle of Sommo-Sierra (near Madrid, November 30, 1808). ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... told him All, from the first. He heard me patiently; And then remarked: 'But do you never long For that secure and easy life at home? You will go back to Liverpool, perchance, When you've had quite enough of servitude And toil precarious.'—'I go not back,' Said I, 'while health and liberty are left. The home that's grudged is not the home for me. Give me but love, and like the reed I yield; Deal with me harshly, you may break, not bend me.' 'Ah! there is something wrong in all these things,' Replied ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... when she was a "great" girl of fourteen or fifteen, and after various drab adventures in servitude came to this country and was presently sent to my mother on approval. She had left her last place in England because of a horrible butler. He was bowlegged and very old. He drank and made the poor frightened girls in the house listen to horrible ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris

... or any men, can or ought to be independent of the world. Let my sons make friends for themselves, and enjoy the advantage of mine. I object only to their becoming dependent, wasting the best years of their lives in a miserable, debasing servitude to patrons—to patrons, who at last may perhaps capriciously desert them at ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... kind of dog-like service of admiration, gazing at me from afar off, as at one who had liberally enjoyed those "advantages" which he envied for himself. He followed at heel; his laugh was ready chorus; our friends gave him the nickname of "The Henchman." It was in this insidious form that servitude ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rigour. These were the people who were called Elotae, or Helots. The number of them exceedingly increased in process of time, the Lacedaemonians giving undoubtedly the same name to all the people whom they reduced to the same condition of servitude. As they themselves were averse to labour, and entirely addicted to war, they left the cultivation of their lands to these slaves, assigning every one of them a certain portion of ground, the produce of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... quite scandalized when he actually spent a whole day, as she, by dint of judiciously "pumping" Patrick, contrived to ascertain, in attending the trial of those "horrid wretches of dynamitards," where he heard the case, and heard the sentence of five years' penal servitude passed upon a gray-haired man with ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford

... Lyon MacKenzie, the leader in Ontario, and Louis Papineau, the leader in Quebec, both had to flee for their lives. It is a question if a hundred people all told were killed. Probably a score in all were executed; as many again were sent to penal servitude; and several hundreds escaped punishment by fleeing across the boundary and joining in the famous night raids of Hunters' Lodges. Within a few years both the leaders and exiles were permitted to return to Canada, where they lived honored lives. It was not as a rebellion that 1837 was ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... against you in any unlawful way—which I deny—I would have done so without a protector? Could you find a better protection than this? The punishment for forgery let me remind you, is five years penal servitude at the least." He looked down at the document with a cold smile, and then he glanced up again at his victim. Jones saw that he was done; done not by Marcus Mulhausen, but by Rochester. He had tripped over a kink ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... rights of her ever oppressed sex. From the point of view of literary art the immoderate formlessness of these partisan novels was an aberration; but meanwhile the writer has once more emancipated herself from such servitude to the cause. The finest understanding for feminine characters, all of which are children of her heart, cannot indeed compensate for imperfect comprehension of the masculine way of thinking. Strictly speaking, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... kindly took his hand, and, turning to me, said, Don't believe him, Madam, he is not our servant;—he has been our friend forty years; we flatter ourselves he deems not that servitude. ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning

... the Roman people, their own freedom, and the conscience of mankind. Great indeed," he bitterly continues, "are the proofs we have given of what we can endure. The antique time saw to the utmost bounds of freedom, we of servitude; robbed by an inquisition of the common use of speech and hearing, we should have lost our very memory with our voice, were it as much in our power to forget as to be dumb. Now at last our breath has come back; ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... man, without her consent, given in her sovereign capacity, if indeed she be an intelligent creature, and provided she be competent to exercise the power of suffrage, which is the sovereignty, even if that government be wise and just in itself, is a violation of natural right and an enforcement of servitude and slavery against her on the part of man. If woman, like the infant or the defective classes, be incapable of self-government, then republican society may exclude her from all participation in the enactment and enforcement of the laws under which she lives. But in ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... thinking little about religious matters until her marriage. Then, her new station in life indicating more strictly her apparent duties toward the Church, she had conformed punctiliously to this light servitude, as do so ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant

... about amid a dozen guests, while, to give additional zest to your feelings of enjoyment, a couple of buxom lassies are peeping out of the attics, and singing like crickets. 9 " Make your own reflections upon the Government that dooms you to personal servitude, while your colleague is allowed purchaseable service. Sleep over the same, and repeat the foregoing regime on the second day; and, filled with the happy influences so much cause for gratitude must inspire, give reflection ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... me the vizier his father had changed his purpose, and instead of reserving me for the king, as he first designed, had made him a present of my person. I easily believed him; for, oh! think how a slave as I am, accustomed from my infant years to the laws of servitude, could or ought to resist him! I must own I did it with the less reluctance, on account of the affection for him, which the freedom of our conversation and daily intercourse has excited in my heart. I could without regret resign the hope of ever being the king's, and think myself ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... "This tale of the temporary servitude of particular gods, by order of Jove, as a punishment for misbehaviour, recurs not unfrequently among the incidents of the Mythical world."—Grote, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... here Be bound to servitude and thrall, My faithful heart is free entier And mind to serve my lady at all. Would God that I were perigall Under that redolent rose to rest! Yet at the least, my heart, thou sall Abide with her ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... said Brett. "One hates to mention such a brutal word as 'police' in an affair demanding finesse. Personally I hate the blunderers. They rob life of its charm. They have absolutely no conception of art. Romance with them can end only in penal servitude or on the gallows. Believe me, Hussein, I am very discreet." In another minute he was standing in the street, and inhaling generous draughts of ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... from the field. The forces of Anatolia, loyal in their revolt, were drawn away to the banners of their lawful princes. His Tartar allies had been tempted by the letters and emissaries of Timur, who reproached their ignoble servitude under the slaves of their fathers; and offered to their hopes the dominion of their new, or the liberty of their ancient, country. In the right wing of Bajazet the cuirassiers of Europe charged with faithful hearts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the domination of Christian Rome over the souls, as they had represented the domination of heathen Rome over the bodies of men. And so side by side with the towers of the Norman keep rose the towers of the Norman cathedral— the two signs of a double servitude. ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley



Words linked to "Servitude" :   villainage, slavery, villeinage, thrall



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