Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A system under which a nominally free social class or a religious, national, or racial minority is permanently oppressed and degraded.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The maintenance, by animals of one species, of individuals of another species in return for their labor as servants.
- noun In botany, a peculiar form of symbiosis in which one organism bears to another the relation of slave to master; noting especially the relation of the algal to the fungal component of a lichen: opposed to mutualistic
symbiosis. .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The condition of the Helots or slaves in Sparta; slavery.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The permanent
oppression of a nominallyfree group of people - noun zoology A form of
symbiosis in which one species is forced to perform tasks for another, for their mutual benefit
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Whatever the origins of helotism and its relation to slavery, it is reasonably certain that when the Spartans conquered Messenia in the southwest of the Peloponnese (probably in the eighth or seventh century), the native population became helots.
OpEdNews - Diary: Palestinians in Gaza, the Modern Helots 2008
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None of this is unique, and ancient and modern authors have found it very difficult to define helotism, because it was not considered to be an ordinary type of unfree labor.
OpEdNews - Diary: Palestinians in Gaza, the Modern Helots 2008
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Probably, helotism is a very ancient category; it may even be a survival from Mycenean times.
OpEdNews - Diary: Palestinians in Gaza, the Modern Helots 2008
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No sign of the times more plainly discovered the helotism to which the Restoration had condemned the young manhood of the epoch.
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Instead, for the sake of avarice, power and even religious helotism, the members of the U.N. allow villains who desire war to obtain nuclear technology and ignore their own resolutions to disarm terrorists.
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There is not the slightest likelihood of rebellion on the part of the negroes after 1840, unless some unrighteous attempts be made to keep up the helotism of the class by enactments of partial laws.
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society
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This form of helotism flourished but three years on American soil.
Woman and the Republic — a Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates Helen Kendrick Johnson 1880
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No sign of the times more plainly discovered the helotism to which the
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Honor�� de Balzac 1824
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No sign of the times more plainly discovered the helotism to which the
Lost Illusions Honor�� de Balzac 1824
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