bondage.
The state of being enslaved or the practice of slavery.
Meaning & usage
The state of being enslaved or the practice of slavery.
debt bondage
In Judeo-Christian tradition, the Israelites fled bondage at the hands of the Egyptians, only to wander in the wilderness for the next four decades.
The state of lacking freedom; constraint.
He lived in financial bondage to his cocaine habit; no matter how much he earned, it all seemed to disappear up his nose.
The practice of physically restraining people for sexual pleasure, such as by tying up or shackling.
Their marriage broke up when she discovered he had been engaging in bondage games with a local dominatrix while he was supposedly working out at the gym.
Applied to clothing with many buckles, zips, etc., associated with punk and goth subcultures.
bondage trousers; bondage jeans; bondage pants
Where this word comes from
Inherited from Middle English bondage (“serfdom”), from British Medieval Latin bondagium (“an inferior tenure held by a bond or husbandman”), from Middle English bond (“tenant farmer, serf”), from Old English bonda (“householder, husband, head of a family”), of Old Norse origin. Sense development influenced by the unrelated terms bond and bind.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.