slave
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Someone who is held in servitude as the property of another person, and whose labor is subject to the owner's volition and control.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
slayvIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsleɪv
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
figuratively
A drudge; one who labors or is obliged (e.g. by prior contract) to labor like a slave with limited rights, e.g. an indentured servant.
A person who is held in servitude as the property of another person, and whose labor (and often also whose body and life) is subject to the owner's volition and control.
A person who is owned by someone
figuratively
An abject person.
A sex slave, a person who is forced against their will to perform, for another person or group, sexual acts on a regular or continuing basis.
A member of an Athabascan First Nations people indigenous to the region near the Great Slave Lake in western Canada
verb
transitive
To place a device under the control of another.
Work very hard, like a slave
To work as a slaver, to enslave people.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A drudge; one who labors or is obliged (e.g. by prior contract) to labor like a slave with limited rights, e.g. an indentured servant.
Used this way, slave is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in law or legal contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Law/legal
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use slave
- “To slave a hard disk.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
A branch of the Indo-European family of languages.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Any of the southern states in which slavery was legal prior to the American Civil War.
Traffic in slaves.
A person engaged in slave trade.
Traffic in slaves.
Any of various ants captured as larvae and enslaved by another species.
A person engaged in slave trade.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: drudge
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.