esne

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points: 4
Words With Friends: 5
Letters: 4

Definition of esne

1 sense · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

(historical)A hireling of servile status; slave.

“To an esne, therefore, I refer the entry in Doomsday-book, that at Chester, if a male or female slave shall do any […]”
“[…] of British extraction captured or purchased, — or of the common German stock descended from the slaves of the first colonists: the esne or slave who works for hire; […]”
“[…] insist that in the event of the death of an esne his full value had to be paid.”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Old English esne, from Proto-West Germanic *asnī, from Proto-Germanic *asnijaz (“day labourer, hireling”), from Proto-Germanic *asniz, *asunz (“reward”), from Proto-Indo-European *os(e)n-, *es(e)n- (“summer, harvest, harvest-time”). Related to Old English earnian (“to labor for, strive after, deserve as the reward of labor, merit, earn, win”). More at earn.