Word.ws English Dictionary

thrall

UK/θɹɔːl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/θɹoːl/

thrall noun: slave; one under the control of another.

Noun

thrall (countable and uncountable, plural thralls)

  1. (literary, otherwise archaic) Slave; one under the control of another.
    • My father was always a thrall to alcohol.
    • My servant, which that is my thrall by right1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “(please specify the story via the 'title' parameter)”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne]...
  2. (uncountable) The state of being under the control of another person.
    • Today's kids are in thrall to their phones.
    • Go: release him from the thrall of Hautia.1864, Herman Melville, Mardi
    Synonyms:
    grasp
  3. A shelf; a stand for barrels, etc.

Adjective

thrall (comparative more thrall, superlative most thrall)

  1. (archaic) Enthralled; captive.
    • Rather than to live thrall, under the awe
      Of lordly lokes, wrapped within my cloke […]1536, Thomas Wyatt, Satire I

Verb

thrall (third-person singular simple present thralls, present participle thralling, simple past and past participle thralled)

  1. (literary, otherwise archaic) To make a thrall; enslave.

Proper noun capitalized: Thrall

Thrall (plural Thralls)

  1. A surname.

thrall meaning in Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

thrall in Urdu

غلام, غلامی, عبودیت, زر خرید, زر خریدی, غلام بنانا

thrall in Malayalam

അടിമ, ദാസൻ, ഭൃത്യൻ

thrall in Kannada

ಅಡಿಮೆ, ತುಳಿಲು, ಅಡಿಯಾಳು, ತುಳಿಲಾಳು

Examples of thrall in a sentence

  • Hereat its Marid appeared and said to him, "Adsum! thy thrall between thy hands is come: ask of me whatso thou wantest."1885–1888, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar...
  • And there were household slaves in golden collars that burned of a plenty there with her, and nine female thralls, and eight male slaves of the Angles that were of gentle birth and battle-captured.1915, Jack London, The Star Rover:
  • [Y]our friend, John Edward, is at the other end of the room with his whole soul held in thrall by photographs of other people's relatives.1889, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 12, in Three Men in a Boat […] :
  • Labour needs to engage positively with the unions on wider policy issues, but not be in thrall with them.2022 November 16, Paul Salveson, “Labour and transport: the important role of the regions”, in RAIL, number 970, page 31:

All 11 example sentences with thrall

Synonyms of thrall

Forms of thrall

Noun
pluralthralls
Adjective
comparativemore thrall
superlativemost thrall
Verb
third-person singular presentthralls
present participlethralling
past participlethralled
pastthralled
Proper noun
pluralThralls

Plural of thrall: thralls

Origin of thrall

From Middle English thral, thralle, threl, threlle, from Old English þrǣl (“thrall, slave, servant”), from Old Norse þræll (“slave”), from Proto-Germanic *þrahilaz, *þragilaz, *þrigilaz (“runner, gofer, servant”), from Proto-Indo-European *tregʰ- (“to pull, drag, race, run”), possibly a variant of *dʰregʰ- (“to run”); related to Gothic 𐌸𐍂𐌰𐌲𐌾𐌰𐌽 (þragjan), Old English þrǣġan (“to run”).

From Middle English thrallen, from the noun above. Compare Old Norse þræla.

Words formed from thrall

Questions about thrall

What does thrall mean?
Thrall means slave; one under the control of another.
What is thrall in Urdu?
Thrall in Urdu is غلام, غلامی, عبودیت. See Thrall meaning in Urdu.
How do you use thrall in a sentence?
Hereat its Marid appeared and said to him, "Adsum! thy thrall between thy hands is come: ask of me whatso thou wantest."
What part of speech is thrall?
Thrall can be a noun, an adjective, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce thrall?
Thrall is pronounced /θɹɔːl/ (UK).
What is the plural of thrall?
The plural of thrall is thralls.

Words near thrall in the dictionary

  1. thrains
  2. thralage
  3. thraldom
  4. thraldoms
  5. Thrale
  6. thrall
  7. thrallage
  8. thrallborn
  9. thralldom
  10. thralldoms
  11. thralled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thrall (page history and authors); Thrall (page history and authors); thrall (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); thrall (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); thrall (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-thrall.ogg, en-us-thrall.ogg.

Cite this entry: “thrall.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thrall. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.