From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishfeudalismfeu‧dal‧is‧m /ˈfjuːdl-ɪzəm/ noun [uncountable] PGSHa system which existed in the Middle Ages, in which people received land and protection from a lord when they worked and fought for him → serfdom
Examples from the Corpus
feudalism• In terms of the dominant concepts of the age, feudalism appeared as the natural order of things.• It took several centuries for feudalism to be formed.• This was one more bit of debris from the capitalist system, from feudalism, from the Dark Ages.• This is crucial because Marx was to go on to argue that capitalism grew out of one such combination in feudalism.• Nevertheless, feudalism was something else as well.• None the less, they are worth considering, because they help us to understand both the origin and the artificiality of feudalism.• The burgesses constituted a growing challenge to the social relations of feudalism. 