different between serf vs peasantry

English

Etymology

From Middle English serf, from Old French serf, from Latin servus (“slave, serf, servant”), perhaps of Etruscan origin

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /s??f/
• (US) IPA^(key): /s?f/
• Homophone: surf (in accents with the fern-fir-fur merger)
• Rhymes: -??(?)f

Noun

serf (plural serfs)

1. a partially free peasant of a low hereditary class, attached like a slave to the land owned by a feudal lord and required to perform labour, enjoying minimal legal or customary rights
2. a similar agricultural labourer in 18th and 19th century Europe
3. (strategy games) a worker unit

   Synonyms: peasant, peon, villager

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

See also

• slave

Anagrams

• ESRF, FERS, RFEs, Refs, erfs, f***ers, refs

Catalan

Etymology

From Latin servus.

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Valencian) IPA^(key): /?se?f/
• (Central) IPA^(key): /?serf/

Noun

serf m (plural serfs, feminine serva)

1. serf

Related terms

• servitud

Further reading

• “serf” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Dutch

Etymology

From Middle Dutch serf, from Old French serf, from Latin servus.

Noun

serf m (plural serven, diminutive serfje n)

1. a serf (semifree peasant obliged to remain on the lord's land and to perform extensive chores for him)

   Synonyms: horige, laat, lijfeigene

French

Etymology

From Middle French serf, from Old French serf, from Latin servus (“slave, serf, servant”), from Proto-Indo-European *ser-wo- (“guardian”), or perhaps of Etruscan origin.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (predominant) /s??f/, (rarely) /s??/
• Homophones: cerf, sers, sert

Noun

serf m (plural serfs, feminine serve)

1. a serf (semifree peasant obliged to remain on the lord's land and to perform extensive chores for him)

Adjective

serf (feminine singular serve, masculine plural serfs, feminine plural serves)

1. being or like a serf, semifree

Related terms

Further reading

• “serf” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• fers

Mauritian Creole

Etymology

From French cerf.

Noun

serf

1. deer

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French serf.

Noun

serf m (plural serfs)

1. serf (semifree peasant)

Descendants

• French: serf

Old French

Etymology 1

From Latin servus.

Noun

serf m (oblique plural sers, nominative singular sers, nominative plural serf)

1. serf (semifree peasant)

Descendants

• Middle French: serf
  • French: serf
• ? English: serf

Etymology 2

See servir

Verb

serf

1. first-person singular present indicative of servir

Seychellois Creole

Etymology

From French cerf.

Noun

serf

1. deer

References

• Danielle D’Offay et Guy Lionnet, Diksyonner Kreol - Franse / Dictionnaire Créole Seychellois - Français

English

Etymology

From peasant +? -ry, from Middle English paissaunt.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?z?nt?i/
• Hyphenation: peas?ant?ry

Noun

peasantry (countable and uncountable, plural peasantries)

1. (historical) Impoverished rural farm workers, either as serfs, small freeholders or hired hands.
   • 1920, Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, Chapter 3.

     They distressed her. They were so stolid. She had always maintained that there is no American peasantry, and she sought now to defend her faith by seeing imagination and enterprise in the young Swedish farmers, and in a traveling man working over his order-blanks. But the older people, Yankees as well as Norwegians, Germans, Finns, Canucks, had settled into submission to poverty. They were peasants, she groaned.

2. Ignorant people of the lowest social status; bumpkins, rustics.
   • 1885, George Eliot, Silas Marner, Chapter 1.

     Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the gray-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity.

Translations