villeinage

1. 1.

   the legal status or condition of servitude of a villein or feudal serf

   Synonymsvillainage

   Broaderlegal statusservitude
2. 2.

   tenure by which a villein held land

   Broadertenure

Other forms of villeinage

plural

villeinages·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about villeinage

What does villeinage mean?

villeinage means "the legal status or condition of servitude of a villein or feudal serf". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in villeinage?

villeinage has 3 syllables: vil-lei-nage. The stress falls on "vil".

What is another word for villeinage?

Close synonyms include villainage. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is villeinage a common word?

villeinage is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.