corvée
Americannoun
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unpaid labor for one day, as on the repair of roads, exacted by a feudal lord.
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an obligation imposed on inhabitants of a district to perform services, as repair of roads, bridges, etc., for little or no remuneration.
noun
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European history a day's unpaid labour owed by a feudal vassal to his lord
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the practice or an instance of forced labour
Etymology
Origin of corvée
1300–50; Middle English < Middle French < Late Latin corrogāta contribution, collection, noun use of feminine of Latin corrogātus (past participle of corrogāre to collect by asking), equivalent to cor- cor- + rogā ( re ) to ask + -tus past participle suffix
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
To do so, they resurrected corvée, a 19th-century Haitian law for indentured labor.
From New York Times • May 20, 2022
But it is also the ideogram for šisîtu, the call of the nâgiru to war or the corvée.
From Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters by Johns, C. H. W. (Claude Hermann Walter)
They had in 1756 remonstrated with the king against the corvée, declaring that the condition of the peasantry of France was "a thousand times less tolerable than the condition of the slaves in America."
From Life of Adam Smith by Rae, John
Bavarian soldiers in greasy corvée lumbered among the charred chaos searching for their dead.
From Lorraine A romance by Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William)
"But they don't believe in the corvée, surely?"
From Ringfield A Novel by Harrison, S. Frances (Susie Frances)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
