indenture
/ɪnˈdɛntʃə
/noun
1A legal agreement, contract, or document, in particular:
Synonyms
contract, agreement, covenant, compact, bond, pledge, promise, warrant, undertaking, commitment, settlement, arrangement, understanding;
lease, guarantee, warranty;
certificate, deed, document, instrument
rare engagement
1.1 historical A deed or contract of which copies were made for the contracting parties with the edges indented for identification and to prevent forgery.Similarly, violations of bondholder rights by persons other than the company generally will not result in a breach of the bond indenture, since these persons are not party to the indenture....
- By an indenture of the same date executed by them, the Somerset Estate was appointed and transferred to the 4th Duke.
- At the dawn of the twentieth-century, baby farms provoked sensation, newspapers advertised babies, and indentures and deeds were still used to exchange children.
1.2A formal list, certificate, or inventory: indentures recording the number of 1377 taxpayers...
- This can be expressed as a ratio or as the conversion price, and is specified in the indenture along with other provisions.
- Many of the local indentures of the fifteenth century survive too; at first glance they seem informative, but can be misleading as to electoral method.
- The creditors said that the bond indenture allowed a foreclosure on the company's assets in lieu of repayment.
1.3An agreement binding an apprentice to a master: the 30 apprentices have received their indentures on completion of their training...
- Apprentices' indentures issued by the Edinburgh College of Surgeons in the 1720s forbad trainees to exhume the dead - which suggests that they had been doing so.
- Apprenticeship indentures from the 1880s make interesting reading.
- Fortunately he was literate and his indenture involved legal training.
1.4 [mass noun] The state of being bound to service by an indenture: the bracelet on his wrist represented his indenture to his master...
- Today, we are shocked when young children are put to work for pennies a day in India, or China, in conditions of indenture that approximate slavery.
- Even girls without a good relationship with their parents forgave them and accepted their indenture as a filial duty.
- Parents also begged the girls not to reveal the parents' involvement in the indenture to the police, and accused the girls of being unfilial if they did.
1.5 historical A contract by which a person agreed to work for a set period for a landowner in a British colony in exchange for passage to the colony.Once used to bring workers to the American and West Indian colonies, indentures exchanged a fixed period of labour for transportation, payment, food, and housing....
- Servitude became a central labor institution in early English America: Between one-half and two-thirds of all white immigrants to the British colonies arrived under indenture.
- More would have made the trans-Atlantic voyage, but poverty had forced many into debt or indenture.
verb [with object] (usually be indentured to) chiefly historical
Bind (someone) by an indenture as an apprentice or labourer: Dick was indentured to the Company in 1917 (as adjective indentured) indentured labourers...
- She is hopelessly indentured to her wicked stepmother who treats her like a voluptuous doormat.
- Most of us are indentured to one or another degree to any of a number of physical and psychological desires.
- He left school at 16 years of age, with no idea what he wanted to do, so his father indentured him as an apprentice in his company.
Derivatives
indentureship
- Their will to survive, no matter the obstacles, was pivotal in releasing them from the physical and psychological bondage that characterised indentureship.
- Oh well one could hold out hope that they were selling themselves into some sort of indentureship and this would be the last episode.
- By distancing herself, Condé is able to explore anew the ethno-social legacy of slavery and indentureship in a French Caribbean village.
Origin
Late Middle English endenture, via Anglo-Norman French from medieval Latin indentura, from indentatus, past participle of indentare (see indent1).