indentured

[in-den-cherd]

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.

verb

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

Other Word Forms

• unindentured adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of indentured¹

indenture + -ed ²

Example Sentences

Indian outsourcing firms have systematically exploited the H-1B system, turning it into what critics call an “outsourcing visa” that enables wage theft and creates indentured servitude conditions for foreign workers.

From Los Angeles Times

Describing himself as a kind of indentured servant, he said he’d been “forced to work in a criminal enterprise, and if he didn’t, he would be killed,” Starr testified.

From Los Angeles Times

The reparations legislation that has failed to advance includes a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have banned prisons from requiring inmates to work, which some consider state-sanctioned slavery or indentured servitude.

From Los Angeles Times

Bobo, her parents and the other white settlers benefit from an unjust system, always presented matter-of-factly, as the adults relish their domestic bliss at the expense of the indentured locals.

From Los Angeles Times

But when she gets kidnapped to work as an indentured servant at the Imperial Palace, she starts making a name for herself with her scientific know-how and talents at deduction.

From Salon