Vil"lan*age (?; 48), n. [OF. villenage, vilenage. See Villain.]

1. FeudalLaw

The state of a villain, or serf; base servitude; tenure on condition of doing the meanest services for the lord.

[In this sense written also villenage, and villeinage.]

I speak even now as if sin were condemned in a perpetual villanage, never to be manumitted. Milton.

Some faint traces of villanage were detected by the curious so late as the days of the Stuarts. Macaulay.

2.

Baseness; infamy; villainy.

[Obs.]

Dryden.

 

© Webster 1913.

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