THRALL

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does thrall mean? 

• THRALL (noun)
  The noun THRALL has 2 senses:

1. the state of being under the control of another person

2. someone held in bondage

  Familiarity information: THRALL used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• THRALL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of being under the control of another person

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

bondage; slavery; thraldom; thrall; thralldom

Hypernyms ("thrall" is a kind of...):

subjection; subjugation (forced submission to control by others)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "thrall"):

bonded labor (a practice in which employers give high-interest loans to workers whose entire families then labor at low wages to pay off the debt; the practice is illegal in the United States)

servitude (state of subjection to an owner or master or forced labor imposed as punishment)

serfdom; serfhood; vassalage (the state of a serf)

Derivation:

thraldom; thralldom (the state of being under the control of another person)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Someone held in bondage

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("thrall" is a kind of...):

bond servant (someone bound to labor without wages)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "thrall"):

helot; serf; villein ((Middle Ages) a person who is bound to the land and owned by the feudal lord)

 Context examples 

What man would be so caitiff and thrall as to fail you at your need?

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

If that time shall come again, I look to you to make it a happy memory of my husband's life that it was his loving hand which set me free from the awful thrall upon me."

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

A moment before I had been safe of all men’s respect, wealthy, beloved—the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Nay, Aylward, said Alleyne, laying his hand upon the sleeve of his companion's frayed jerkin, you cannot think me so thrall as to throw aside an old friend because I have had some small share of good fortune.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)