Meaning & use
corvee
Unpaid labor that a feudal lord or the state required from peasants instead of taxes.
See it in a sentence
Villagers under the corvee system had to repair the lord's roads several weeks each year.
Historians study corvee labor to understand how medieval states built roads without a cash economy.
A note on using this word
Corvee comes from French and now appears mainly in historical writing about feudal or colonial labor systems.
Words with a similar meaning
forced labor
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “corvee”, then compare your use with the examples above.
Your draft stays on this page and is not sent anywhere.