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HOW TO PRONOUNCE

peonage

American English · Video pronunciation

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American Pronunciation Guide · 1:05
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What does peonage mean?

noun

  1. The state of being a peon; the system of paying back debt through servitude and labour; loosely, any system of involuntary servitude.

Definitions regrouped for readability · CC BY-SA 4.0

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In the pages of books

See this word in context.

I, with a train load of other strikers, went to Louisiana and the whole bunch of us were practically forced into peonage.
James J. (James John) DavisThe Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of ItProject Gutenberg ebook #1297
Plain, simple instructions went out from Washington,--the freedom of laborers to choose employers, no fixed rates of wages, no peonage or forced labor.
VariousThe Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial IssueProject Gutenberg ebook #206
More book examples (1)
Thus it is that in the country districts of the South, by written or unwritten law, peonage, hindrances to the migration of labor, and a system of white patronage exists over large areas.
W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du BoisThe Souls of Black FolkProject Gutenberg ebook #408