articled

1. 1
   adjective

   Bound under the written articles of an apprenticeship, committed by formal contract to train under an employer for a fixed term.

   Like a modern intern locked into a multi-year contract in exchange for on-the-job training.

   Articled clerks often worked for little pay while they qualified for the profession.

   An articled apprentice was legally bound to his employer for the full duration of the contract.

   Similarapprenticed, indentured, bound

   Note

   This adjective has no degrees: a person is articled or not, never more articled. Its home is the phrase articled clerk, the trainee in law or accountancy who served a qualifying period under an attorney or chartered firm before admission to practice. Before a noun it is this adjective. After a verb, as in was articled to a firm, the same word reads as the past participle.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of article.

   The senior attorney articled three new clerks that spring.

   He was articled to a shipping company for a seven-year term.

   Note

   A regular past form whose everyday use is the apprenticeship verb. It is transitive and takes to for the master or firm: one is articled to a solicitor, articled to a shipping company. Older texts may also use the same spelling for the obsolete verb meaning to accuse by formal articles, or for setting something out in distinct particulars. In those texts, articled can mean charged or itemized.

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