Find the word definition

The Collaborative International Dictionary
Villanage

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

  1. (Feudal Law) 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.

Wiktionary
villanage

n. (alternative form of villeinage English)

Usage examples of "villanage".

When that is done away with, and we return to the state of villanage, holding our tenement-houses, all to be of the same pattern, of the State, that is to say, of the Tammany Ring which is to take the place of the feudal lord,--the office of Register of Deeds will, I presume, become useless, and the dynasty will be deposed.