INDEBTED

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does indebted mean? 

• INDEBTED (adjective)
  The adjective INDEBTED has 2 senses:

1. owing gratitude or recognition to another for help or favors etc

2. under a legal obligation to someone

  Familiarity information: INDEBTED used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INDEBTED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Owing gratitude or recognition to another for help or favors etc

Similar:

obligated (caused by law or conscience to follow a certain course)

Derivation:

indebtedness (a personal relation in which one is indebted for a service or favor)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Under a legal obligation to someone

Similar:

obligated (caused by law or conscience to follow a certain course)

Derivation:

indebtedness (an obligation to pay money to another party)

 Context examples 

He seemed to consider himself hardly less indebted to me, than to Mr. Micawber; which I consider (as I told him) quite a compliment.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I beg you not to imagine that I am in any way indebted to you for making this journey.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I am also much indebted to my friends Mr. J. C. Parkinson and Robert Barr for information upon the subject of the ring.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I am sure, Mr. Holmes, that we are very much indebted to you for having cleared the matter up.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He said that These were men to whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I shall indeed be indebted to you if you can throw a light where all is so dark to us.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

To Mr. John Knightley was she indebted for her first idea on the subject, for the first start of its possibility.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

They were indebted, the next day, to Charles Hayter, for all the minute knowledge of Louisa, which it was so essential to obtain every twenty-four hours.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

I am not indebted for my present happiness to your eager desire of expressing your gratitude.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Salisbury she had known to be her point on leaving Northanger; but after the first stage she had been indebted to the post-masters for the names of the places which were then to conduct her to it; so great had been her ignorance of her route.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)