Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Helot
/ˈhɛlət/noun
A member of the enslaved population that farmed Spartan land, or by extension anyone kept in servitude.
The Greek roots
εἵλως
heílōs
Spartan serf, captive
Literally: “one taken captive”
Follow a root:εἵλως1 word
The story of the word
The ancients derived the name from Helos, a Laconian town whose people Sparta was said to have enslaved; modern philologists more often link it to ἑλεῖν, to capture. Helots outnumbered full Spartiates several times over, and the magistrates formally declared war on them each year so that killing one carried no pollution. English writers from the sixteenth century onward reached for the word whenever they wanted to describe an underclass held down by law rather than by chance.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
helotryhelotism
In a sentence
He described the mill hands as helots, which cost him the account.