The word was recorded in English by 1388, from Latin, by way of French. A Scottish legal record, later published in the Douglas Book, described a woman's right to leave with her household staff and their possessions.
French had already used the word by the mid-fifteenth century, to describe the group of people who followed and served a person of high rank.
Behind that Latin word lay an even older Latin term meaning ‘servant, or slave’. Its own origin remains unknown, with no confirmed root beyond Latin.
DOMESTIC and SERVITUDE entered English in the early fifteenth century, both from Latin. DOMESTIC comes from a Latin word, domus, 'house', the word Latin used to describe parents and their children. SERVITUDE comes from a different Latin word, servus, 'slave', meaning the state of being enslaved.
By 1700, in accounts of Roman history, the word was also used to name a group of gladiators, all owned and trained by the same master. In twentieth-century American slang, the word was also associated with organised crime. And its use to describe household servants is now considered rare and historical.
