as in slaves
a person in the past who belonged to a low social class and who lived and worked on land owned by another person
Medieval serfs who tended land owned by a lord.
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Recent Examples of serfs
Slaves, serfs, peasants, and wage workers mostly understood that what was being struck was a hammer blow on their behalf.
—
Jack Sheehan
september 4, Literary Hub, 4 Sep. 2025
Jack Sheehan
september 4, Literary Hub, 4 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for serfs
Noun
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Douglass is not victim of some faint-hearted anxiety about the use of force to free slaves, and to dispatch those who would threaten their freedom or their lives.—
Peter D'Abrosca,
FOXNews.com,
2 Oct. 2025
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But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.—
Preston Fore,
Fortune,
27 Sep. 2025
Noun
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Of those who stay, more than eighty per cent work in the informal sector—as domestic servants, street hawkers, porters, cleaners.—
Kapil Komireddi,
New Yorker,
22 Sep. 2025
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In the 1841 census, fourteen people were living in the farmhouse, nine of them children, three servants.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
19 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Serfs.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/serfs. Accessed 5 Oct. 2025.
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