American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

A system under which a nominally free social class or a religious, national, or racial minority is permanently oppressed and degraded.

(Zoology)another name for dulosis

2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) a sociopolitical system in which a class, minority, nation, etc, is held in a state of subjection

1. (Historical Terms) the condition or quality of being a Helot

Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. a symbiotic relationship in which one group of organisms is subordinate.

1. the state or quality of being a helot; serfdom or slavery.

helotism

the condition or quality of being a helot; serfdom or slavery. Also helotage, helotry.

See also: Slavery

-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.