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  1. helot love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. One of a class of serfs in ancient Sparta, neither a slave nor a free citizen.
  2. n. A person in servitude; a serf.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. One of a class of serfs among the ancient. Spartans who were owned by the state, were bound to the soil under allotment to landholders, and fulfilled all servile functions. The Helots paid their masters a fixed proportion of the products of the ground cultivated by them. They served as light-armed troops in war, and in great emergencies bodies of them were organized as regular or heavy-armed troops, in which case they might be manumitted as a reward for bravery. They were descendants of captives of war, most of them probably of the conquered Achean aborigines of Laconia; and they were very cruelly treated, and often systematically massacred, to keep down their numbers and prevent them from organized revolt.
  2. n. Hence A serf or slave, in general; a servile person; one subject, to the orders and caprices of another.

Wiktionary

  1. n. An individual of the ancient Spartan class of serfs.
  2. n. A serf; a slave.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A slave in ancient Sparta; a Spartan serf; hence, a slave or serf.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. (Middle Ages) a person who is bound to the land and owned by the feudal lord

Etymologies

  1. Latin Helotes, from Ancient Greek (Εἵλωτες), possibly from ἁλίσκομαι ("to be captured, to be made prisoner"). (Wiktionary)
  2. From Greek Heilōtes, pl. of Heilōs, Heilōt-. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. thrall

hyponyms (2)

Words that are more specific

  1. cotter
  1. cottier

same context (8)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. farm-labourer
  1. wage-slave
  1. lemon-peel
  1. cow-house
  1. bondsman
  1. hith
  1. pining
  1. appanage

rhymes (3)

Words with the same terminal sound

  1. pellet
  1. pelot
  1. zealot

reverse dictionary (3)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. neodamode
  1. helotage
  1. helotry

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Lists

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  • chained_bear "In fact, only half her attention was focused on the heavyset gentleman's murmured remarks to his helot, a small young woman in an overall too big for her, with pink streaks in her hair."
    —Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), 976 Feb 3, 2010

  • reesetee Story of my life. ;-) Aug 23, 2007

  • tsuomela Beany: What's a hee-lot?
    The Colonel: You've ever been broke, sonny?
    Beany: Sure, mostly often.
    The Colonel: All right. You're walking along, not a nickel in your jeans, your free as the wind, nobody bothers ya. Hundreds of people pass you by in every line of buisness: shoes, hats, automobiles, radios, everything, and there all nice lovable people and they lets you alone, is that right? Then you get a hold of some dough and what happens, all those nice sweet lovable people become hee-lots, a lotta heels. They begin to creep up on ya, trying to sell ya something: they get long claws and they get a stranglehold on ya, and you squirm and you duck and you holler and you try to push them away but you haven't got the chance. They gots ya. First thing ya know you own things, a car for instance, now your whole life is messed up with alot more stuff: you get license fees and number plates and gas and oil and taxes and insurance and identification cards and letters and bills and flat tires and dents and traffic tickets and motorcycle cops and tickets and courtrooms and lawers and fines and... a million and one other things. What happens? You're not the free and happy guy you used to be. You need to have money to pay for all those things, so you go after what the other fellas got. There you are, you're a hee-lot yourself. Aug 23, 2007

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‘helot’ has been looked up 3812 times, loved by 1 person, added to 22 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 8.