indentured servant

American  

[in-den-cherd sur-vuhnt] / ɪnˈdɛn tʃərd ˈsɜr vənt /

noun

1. a person who agrees to work for another without pay, with or without a contract, in order to repay a debt or in exchange for food and shelter.

   By financing immigrants’ passage to this country, the farmer receives steady labor from the indentured servants obliged to pay off their large debts.

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indentured servant Cultural  

1. A person under contract to work for another person for a definite period of time, usually without pay but in exchange for free passage to a new country. During the seventeenth century most of the white laborers in Maryland and Virginia came from England as indentured servants.

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Etymology

Origin of indentured servant

First recorded in 1665–75

Example Sentences

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

A son of a once wealthy merchant family, Joyce was being sent to the West Indies to start his new life as an indentured servant.

From National Geographic • Jan. 11, 2024

“My grandmother came here as an indentured servant and I couldn’t find anywhere that she even paid a fee,” Siebenaler said.

From Washington Post • Sep. 20, 2021

Bradford's genteel second wife Alice and the fiery Eleanor Billington, an Anglican woman and former indentured servant not interested in the least in submitting to "proper" Puritan customs, are the stars and focus of "Beheld."

From Salon • Mar. 7, 2020

Sambo had learned his trade from a Scottish convict turned indentured servant.

From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis