villein
Pluralvilleins
- 1A tenant in the feudal system who held land as a serf.
Every villein on the manor owed the lord several days of labor a week in return for his strips of land.
The manor court heard a complaint from two villeins whose oxen had strayed into the lord's meadow.
Note
The spelling carries the meaning: villein, with -ein, is the historian's word for a medieval tenant, while its doublet villain went its own way and came to mean a scoundrel. Both trace back through Anglo-Norman to Medieval Latin villanus, a field hand, from villa, a country home. Use villein only of feudal society; nobody is one today.
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Origin
From Anglo-Norman vilein, a variant of vilain, from Medieval Latin villanus (“field hand”), from Latin villa (“country home”). It is a doublet of villain.