indentured

American  

[in-den-cherd] / ɪnˈdɛn tʃərd /

adjective

1. bound by or occurring under a written contract or formal agreement, especially to work for another.

   The five indentured electrical apprentices of the second-year class were sworn into the union on Thursday.

   Born in Belfast in 1949, he studied art while serving an indentured apprenticeship at a shipyard.

2. relating to, done by, or being an indentured servant.

   Molly Welsh, an Englishwoman sentenced to indentured servitude in 17th-century Maryland, married an African slave named Bannaka.

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verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of indenture.

Other Word Forms

• unindentured
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of indentured

indenture + -ed ²

Explanation

To be indentured is to be forced to work by some contract. It started out as a word for a contract between masters and apprentices. Now it describes anyone bound to work, like it or not, because of some deal. Use the adjective indentured to describe someone who's bound or attached in a legal sense. If you're an indentured plumber's apprentice, you have guaranteed that you'll do that job in a particular way, for a specific length of time. If you're indentured to your grandmother, you may have promised to feed her cat every day for a month. When the word is used in this casual way, it implies a sense of duty that's become a burden.

Example Sentences

Waves of Indians migrated to East Africa around that time, as teachers, clerks, merchants and indentured workers.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 25, 2025

The Bible had a solution for this: the tradition of Jubilee, a 50-year ritual of debt forgiveness, land restoration and the emancipation of slaves and indentured servants.

From Salon • Apr. 12, 2025

“Obviously the banjo’s got African roots too. Country music came from people in the South and Appalachia, slaves and indentured servants from Europe, each gathering and trading stories.”

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 4, 2024

Fifteen-year-old Joyce was captured along with everyone else onboard—a mix of other indentured servants, merchants, and crew–and taken to a slave market in Algiers to be sold at auction.

From National Geographic • Jan. 11, 2024

As indentured servants, people agreed to work for employers for a set number of years, after which the agreement ended and the person was free to find other work.

From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz