Word.ws English Dictionary

helots

helots is the plural of helot.

Meaning of helot

Noun

helot (plural helots)

  1. (historical, Ancient Greece) A member of the ancient Spartan class of serfs.
    • […] when one of their kings dies, not only the Spartans, but a certain number of the country people from every part of Laconia are forced, whether they will or no, to attend the funeral. So these persons and the helots, and likewise the Spartans themselves, flock together to the number of several...1942, “Erato”, in George Rawlinson, transl., The Persian Wars, translation of original by Herodotus
  2. A serf; a slave.
    • A man who conceives and writes a great book, my friend, has done more work than all the helots that laboured on these pyramidal futilities.1910 January 12, Ameen Rihani, “Probing the Trivial”, in The Book of Khalid, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published October 1911, →OCLC, book the first (In the Exchange), pages 10–11

Questions about helots

What is helots the plural of?
Helots is the plural of helot.

Words near helots in the dictionary

  1. helotids
  2. helotism
  3. helotisms
  4. helotries
  5. helotry
  6. helots
  7. help
  8. help a lame dog over a stile
  9. help along
  10. help desk
  11. help desks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: helots (page history and authors); helot (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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