bondage

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Huguenots -- who had just spent five years in Spanish bondage, writing military discourses in a reeking dungeon, filled with toads and vermin, after fighting the battle of liberty for a life-time, and with his brave son already in the Netherlands emulating his father's valour on the same field -- denounced at a little later day, the lukewarmness of Protestant

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Definitions (16)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. noun The state of one who is bound as a slave or serf.
  2. noun A state of subjection to a force, power, or influence.
  3. noun The practice of being physically restrained, as with cords or handcuffs, as a means of attaining sexual gratification.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (8)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • With their bondage, their love of bondage will go. —  The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 Devoted To Literature And National Policy
  • Once out of its tin bondage, the little creature seemed too frightened to move, and suddenly curled down under the protecting table-cover, to restore its ruffled fur, with many a piteous mew The girls gathered around to pet and soothe it Keep away, girls. —  Cricket at the Seashore
  • Hundreds who arrived in Van Diemen's Land in bondage, and many who quitted it without leave, became by a few days spoil, masters of from one hundred to a thousand pounds On the 16th December (1851), a series of resolutions were passed by the legislature of South Australia on the motion of Mr. Hall. Thus, three colonies, by a unanimous vote, pronounced the doom of transportation. —  The History of Tasmania, Volume I
  • People imagine that they are free when they are delivered from religious and political tyrants that persecute and oppress them; but their greatest bondage, and the one that makes the others possible, is the hereditary and acquired prejudice, bias, bigotry and ignorance within themselves. —  To Infidelity and Back
  • I would not desire a believer’s soul to be in a better posture here away,(170) than this,—to be looking upon sin indwelling as his bondage, and redemption from it as freedom; to account himself in so far free, as the free Spirit of Christ enters and writes that free law of love and obedience in his heart, and blots out these base characters of the law of sin. —  The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning
 

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Anglo-Norman, from Middle English bonde, serf, from Old English bōnda, husbandman, from Old Norse bōndi, present participle of būa, to live; see bheuə- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English also boundage; from Middle English bondage, Anglo-French bondage, Middle Latin bondagium, an inferior tenure held by a bond or husbandman: see bond, n., 2. In modern use associated with bond and bound.
  2. from bondage, n.
 

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/ˈbɑndədʒ/
by American Heritage
by Lee Davis-Thalbourne

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