indentured
Americanadjective
-
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.
-
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
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of indentured
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.
Vocabulary lists containing indentured
Blood on the River
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The Milagro Beanfield War
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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.
As the conversation gets rolling, she digs into her roots, explaining that her maternal grandmother was an illiterate indentured servant.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 21, 2025
Octavia Butler's fictional president, elected in November 2024, brings back indentured servitude and suspends all regulations.
From Salon • May 17, 2025
To me, indentured wealth feels like something that should be disbanded.
From Los Angeles Times • May 28, 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
Three of us among the servants made a little consort of music—I on the violin, an indentured Irishman who also played the fiddle, and a slave from another house who played the flageolet.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson
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.
