Word Finder - serf

definition

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

definition

A similar agricultural labourer in 18th and 19th century Europe

definition

(strategy games) a worker unit

synonyms

• peasant
• peon
• villager

In some cases it formed a serf class, e.g.

A little serf boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran into the house.

The serf, who was also a soldier, revolted against bondage.

Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them about a dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."

When a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf, especially if one had to be punished, he always felt undecided and consulted everybody in the house; but when it was possible to have a domestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he did so without the least hesitation.

It had bare deal floors and was furnished with very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood.

But nothing was yet done to modify the relative positions of noble and serf.

Scarcely anything is left of the old chapel dedicated to St Dennis, which for a time was used as a smithy; and of the chapel of St Serf, the patron saint of the burgh, only the tower remains.

Its name is said to be a corruption of the Latin desertum, " a desert," which was applied to a cave on the seashore occupied by St Serf.

The Council of Clermont prescribed that the oath of adherence to the truce be taken every three years by all men above the age of twelve, whether noble, burgess, villein or serf.

The thrall had a house of his own and was rather villein or serf than slave, having rights and a legal price by law.

Since 1931 it has served as a closed monastery for Carmelite nuns, whose garden now includes St Serf's original cave.

The chattel slave was becoming a predial serf, attached to the soil and owing his master certain fixed services and returns in kind.

Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old, bandy- legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.

One day he would order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another day he remained on the couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing room and dozed there without undressing, while--instead of Mademoiselle Bourienne--a serf boy read to him.

Bracton speaks of the contrast between the irregular services of a serf, " who could not know in the evening what he would have to do in the morning," and services agreed upon and definite in their amount.

The serf, the Sudra, was not to worship the gods of the Aryan freemen.

That same evening a house serf who had come from Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering the town.

When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its different branches, it was the serf who especially attracted his attention.

There is little trace of serfs in Babylonia, unless the muskinu be really a serf.

Upon St Serf's, the largest, which commemorates the patron saint of Fifeshire, are the ruins of the Priory of Portmoak - so named from St Moak, the first abbot - the oldest Culdee establishment in Scotland.

It became the prison at various periods of Robert II.; of Alexander Stuart, earl of Buchan, "the Wolf of Badenoch"; Archibald, earl of Douglas (1429); Patrick Graham, archbishop of St Andrews (who died, still in bondage, on St Serf's Island in 1478), and of Mary, queen of Scots.

It took long years to complete, at a cost which can never be estimated, since much of it was done by serf labour.

Here St Serf carried on his missionary labours, and founded a church and cemetery, and here he died and was buried.

Kentigern, the apostle to Cumbria and first bishop of Glasgow, was born at Culross, his mother having been driven ashore during a tempest, and was adopted by St Serf as his son.

The explanation is even more characteristic than the custom itself, because fines on marriage may be levied and were actually levied from people of different condition, from the free as well as from the serf.

The necessity of putting a stop to belated prosecutions on this account in the town court led to the acceptance of the rule that nobody who had lived in a town undisturbed for the term of a year and a day could any longer be claimed by a lord as his serf.

The Culdees of Lochleven lived on St Serf's Inch, which had been given them by a Pictish prince, Brude, about 850.

Thus Bracton says "every male of the age of twelve years, be he free be he serf, ought to be in frankpledge," but he allows for certain exceptions.

Two young citizens were joking with some serf girls who were cracking nuts.

St Petersburg was built largely by forced serf labor at appalling cost of course.

With a serf population even this was not impossible; but as the beds of the canals were graded to no even slope, it did not follow that if water entered the head it would flow evenly on.