A person who is bound to serve another, either through legal contract or involuntary servitude; a servant with restricted freedom.
From bond + servant (from Latin servire meaning 'to serve'). The compound term appears frequently in historical and religious texts, particularly in discussions of medieval and colonial labor systems.
Bondservant appears in the Bible and legal documents from colonial America—it's a category that falls between 'free person' and 'slave,' showing how history had many gradations of unfreedom we've largely forgotten.
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