thrall
/θrɔːl
/noun
1 [mass noun] literary The state of being in someone’s power, or of having great power over someone: she was in thrall to her abusive husband...
- Another is to suppose that those who disagree with us are in thrall to some evil power.
- We live in a world dominated by the private sector and governments in thrall to it.
- We want food freed from the grip of science rather than further in thrall to it.
Synonyms
power, clutches, hands, control, grip, grasp, yoke;
enslavement, bondage, slavery, subjection, subjugation, servitude, tyranny, oppression, domination, hegemony, supremacy
2 archaic A slave, servant, or captive.Lowest in the social order were the thralls, or slaves....
- Later that night, the two flew into the village and laid waste to it, killing some people while making thralls of others.
- No, they would not allow themselves to become the helpless thralls of that traitor.
Derivatives
thraldom
- The river maps the feudarchy of northern India, to which their lives are bound; but from the river's culture, also, comes the expressive lyricism that redeems them, however temporarily, from their thralldom.
- Council house sales freed hundreds of thousands from virtual thraldom, and her union reforms released untold numbers more from the iniquities of the closed shop and secondary picketing.
- Having sloughed off the social illiteracy that was Marxism, after 72 years, western Europe is again in thraldom to the delusions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Origin
Old English thrǣl 'slave', from Old Norse thræll.
Rhymes
- prostate gland
- prostate-specific antigen
- prostatic
- prostatic body
- prostatic fluid
- prostatic gland
- prostatism
- prostatitic
- prostatitis
- prostatolith
- prostatorrhoea
- prostatotomy
- prostatovesical
- prosternal
- prosternation
- prosternum
- prosthaphaeresis
- prosthaphaeretic
- prosthaphaericis
- prosthaphairesis
- prostheca
- prosthesis
- prosthetic
- prosthetically
- prosthetic group