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Vassal   /vˈæsəl/   Listen
noun
Vassal  n.  
1.
(Feud. Law) The grantee of a fief, feud, or fee; one who holds land of a superior, and who vows fidelity and homage to him; a feudatory; a feudal tenant.
2.
A subject; a dependent; a servant; a bondman; a slave. "The vassals of his anger."
Rear vassal, the vassal of a vassal; an arriere vassal.



verb
Vassal  v. t.  To treat as a vassal; to subject to control; to enslave. (Obs.)



adjective
Vassal  adj.  Resembling a vassal; slavish; servile. "The sun and every vassal star."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vassal" Quotes from Famous Books



... Suabia, Milan, the Venetian States, Tyrol, Dalmatia, and finally of the Imperial crown of Germany; for the heir of the Germanic Caesars now styled himself simply the Emperor of Austria, and a great part of Germany had become the humble vassal of Napoleon. Of all the Austrians, it was perhaps the Emperor who felt the least hatred of France. His whole family and his whole people—nobles, priests, the middle classes, and the peasantry—nourished an angry resentment ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... winter. What an ignominious death to the lofty right, were it to die by such a hand; but it does not die. It is impalpable to the 'malicious mockery' of such vain blows.' We are glad it is done—done by the South—done proudly, and in slaveholding style, by the hand of a vassal. What a man does by another he does by himself, says the maxim. But they will disown the honor of it, and cast it on the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... uneasy jealousy had arisen in the Russian Cabinet as to the future schemes of the Kalmuck Khan: and 10 very probable it is that, but for the war then raging, and the consequent prudence of conciliating a very important vassal, or, at least, of abstaining from what would powerfully alienate him, even at that moment such measures would have been adopted as must forever have intercepted 15 the Kalmuck schemes. Slight as were the jealousies of the Imperial Court, they had not escaped the ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... see this problem solved by Mrs. Stowe. That kind of romantic interest which Scott evolved from the relations of lord and vassal, of thief and clansman, from the social more than the moral contrast of Roundhead and Cavalier, of far-descended pauper and nouveau riche which Cooper found in the clash of savagery with civilization, and the shaggy virtue bred on the border-land between the two, Indian ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... Dukes of Burgundy. At this period appears the powerful but rash and cruel Charles the Bold. His life was spent in open or secret strife with Louis XI., king of France, whose suzerain, or nominal vassal, he was. The king was instrumental in stirring up rebellion in several cities of the Low Countries, which the duke put down ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic


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