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

Banneker’s grandparents were said to have been an Englishwoman named Molly, who was a White indentured servant, and an enslaved Wolof man from Senegambia named Bana’ka.

From Washington Post • Mar. 21, 2023

And they want to exploit you for everything you're worth — which, to them, is what you can bring to the table as a corporate indentured servant.

From Salon • Jan. 13, 2022

An indentured servant was typically someone who agreed to work for several years in exchange for his or her passage, eventual freedom, and the promise of some land.

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