A peasant farmer or serf in medieval Germanic and Anglo-Saxon societies; a tenant bound to the land.
From Old English and Old Germanic 'gebur' or 'gebauere,' meaning neighbor or tenant farmer; from 'ge-' (together) plus 'bur' (dweller), literally a 'co-dweller' or tenant of a lord's estate.
The word 'gebur' reveals the hidden history of English—it shows the massive social reorganization when Anglo-Saxons had to define relationships to land, and it proves that English inherited its class vocabulary partly from Old Germanic feudal systems!
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