as in serfdom
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Recent Examples of peonage
The Black community’s relationship with growing food is colored by exploitive practices, from slavery to sharecropping, tenant farming and peonage, or debt servitude.
—
Lyndsay C. Green, Detroit Free Press, 27 Nov. 2024
Further, this much control over the autonomy of an athlete’s rights to their own NIL rights combined with a financial obligation could also trigger scrutiny under the 13th Amendment, which, in addition to abolishing slavery, placed prohibitions on peonage (i.e., working against your will).
—Joe Sabin, Forbes, 10 Oct. 2024
The Wilberforce Act covers physical abuse and peonage, which is forced labor.
—Judy L. Thomas, Kansas City Star, 6 June 2024
Convict leasing, also called peonage, juxtaposed the infrastructure of the Old English debtor’s prison with the barbarism of chattel slavery to bolster American capitalism.
—Phillip Vance Smith, JSTOR Daily, 1 Feb. 2024
See All Example Sentences for peonage
Lyndsay C. Green, Detroit Free Press, 27 Nov. 2024
Further, this much control over the autonomy of an athlete’s rights to their own NIL rights combined with a financial obligation could also trigger scrutiny under the 13th Amendment, which, in addition to abolishing slavery, placed prohibitions on peonage (i.e., working against your will).
—Joe Sabin, Forbes, 10 Oct. 2024
The Wilberforce Act covers physical abuse and peonage, which is forced labor.
—Judy L. Thomas, Kansas City Star, 6 June 2024
Convict leasing, also called peonage, juxtaposed the infrastructure of the Old English debtor’s prison with the barbarism of chattel slavery to bolster American capitalism.
—Phillip Vance Smith, JSTOR Daily, 1 Feb. 2024
See All Example Sentences for peonage
Recent Examples of Synonyms for peonage
Noun
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For them, freedom meant ending serfdom too.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
25 Sep. 2025
-
Kollwitz’ life also coincided with the final days of aristocratic feudalism and serfdom in Germany and the nation’s economic transition to Industrialism.—
Chadd Scott,
Forbes.com,
24 Apr. 2025
Noun
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Usually, their earnings help — but when such women are trapped in servitude, those gaps become all but impossible to fill.—
Ladan Anoushfar,
CNN Money,
24 Nov. 2025
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While some people also practiced goddess worship or wiccan spiritualism, for many the witch was simply a cultural display of joy and a rejection of domestic servitude.—
Time,
Time,
21 Nov. 2025
Noun
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Fulton County Reparations Task Force, a volunteer group in Georgia’s most populous county, recently submitted a 636-page report on the harms the municipality dealt through slavery and discrimination against Black residents.—
AJ Willingham,
AJC.com,
8 Jan. 2026
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When Connecticut receives a report of human trafficking – or modern slavery – multiple agencies collaborate to determine the situation, rescue the victim and provide necessary services like housing, health care and mental health support, and prosecute the offender.—
Kaitlin McCallum,
Hartford Courant,
8 Jan. 2026
Noun
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By the early 20th century, after several centuries of rape, disease, enslavement, and land confiscation by colonizers, rubber barons, and loggers, their numbers had been reduced to 300.—
Stanley Stewart,
Travel + Leisure,
10 Jan. 2026
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National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Xiaolu Guo recasts Ishmael as a 17-year-old girl disguised as a cabin boy and Ahab as a Black freedman named Seneca, haunted by his father’s legacy of enslavement.—
Theara Coleman,
TheWeek,
6 Jan. 2026
Noun
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Where there was once bondage, there is now liberation.—
Essence,
Essence,
7 Jan. 2026
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Women often totter along a delicate line between beauty and torture, femininity and the bondage of expectation.—
Jane Wooldridge,
Miami Herald,
7 Dec. 2025
Noun
-
Jordan’s oversized Wings logo is on the back yoke.—
Angela Velasquez,
Sourcing Journal,
22 Jan. 2026
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Every family may hand down its share of struggles and traumas, but Dabis’s movie suggests that Palestinians living under the yoke of occupation must deal with an especially cruel and binding inheritance.—
Justin Chang,
New Yorker,
14 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Peonage.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/peonage. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.
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