indenture

Definitions

in- (into) + dent (tooth) + -ure (act/result) = literally "the thing with bite-marks." A medieval contract was written twice on one sheet and torn apart along a jagged, tooth-like (indented) line; each party kept a half, and the two zigzag edges had to mesh back together to prove the document was genuine. The contract was named after the anti-forgery teeth.

Why It Means This

The word preserves a vanished medieval practice. Before signatures and seals could be widely trusted, identical copies of a contract were cut apart on a wavy line. Fraud was almost impossible: a forger would have to match the exact zigzag of the original cut. Long after the practice died, the name stuck, and indenture came to mean any binding agreement — most famously the indentured servitude that carried apprentices and laborers across oceans.

Common Collocations

• 1.sign an indenture签订契约
• 2.indentured servant契约佣工
• 3.indentured labor契约劳工
• 4.apprentice indenture学徒契约

Example Sentences

• 1.

  At fourteen he signed an indenture to a London blacksmith for seven years.

• 2.

  Many early colonists arrived under an indenture that bound them to years of labor.

• 3.

  The company indentured the workers to repay the cost of their passage.