The word "vassal" is correct and usable in written English.
It is a noun used to describe someone in a subordinate position to a feudal lord or other superior. For example, "The King's vassals bowed before him in respect."
The crews of the mission ships Okinawan for the most part used the islands as stepping stones on the route from Quanzhou to Naha and back.Imperial China's tributary relations are often misrepresented as chiefly a burden on the vassal state.
Microsoft, which in America is now number two in search after Google, has a willing (and desperate) vassal in Nokia, a phonemaker, and a new mobile operating system.
These ranged from the conquests of Pompey, who about 130 years earlier had turned Judea into a vassal kingdom, to the final Jewish revolts that broke out at the start of the second century.The consequences of these battles were felt all over the Roman empire.
Only if it can defend itself will it be able to stand up to China and, equally, avoid becoming a vassal of its chief ally, the United States.
It used to be a Soviet vassal state, ruled by a Moscow stooge called Saparmurat Niyazov.
Pro-Iranian parties in Iraq already portray the troop talks as a bid to turn Iraq into an American vassal.
He has sounded belligerent towards several of Russia's former vassal states on its rim, and shows little sign of softening towards Chechnya, the rebel republic devastated at his command.
His opponents accuse America of seeking permanent bases in Iraq, turning it into a vassal.
And in neighbouring Lebanon, which Syria had long treated as a vassal, the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a popular former prime minister, had triggered massive protests.
And he has made an astonishing sequence of mistakes in Lebanon, which his father spent quarter of a century turning into a vassal state.
Yet, he has no interest in Kharkiv splitting off from the rest of Ukraine or becoming a Russian vassal.
