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Meaning of slave in English:

slave

Pronunciation /sleɪv/

See synonyms for slave

Translate slave into Spanish

noun

  • 1historical A person who is the legal property of another and is forced to work for and obey them; an enslaved person.

    ‘they kidnapped entire towns and turned them into slaves’
    • ‘At any time, a master could confiscate any money that a slave had saved up, and the slave had no legal recourse.’
    • ‘A University of Pennsylvania report estimates 750,000 women were trafficked into the U.S. as sex slaves in the past decade.’
    • ‘While a slave could be raffled off or wagered at the master's whim, freeing a slave was fraught with legal obstacles.’
    • ‘Since slaves were property, once you find the slave owner, search the records to find out what he did with his property.’
    • ‘The economic foundations of the Confederacy were overthrown and property in slaves valued at $4 billion was expropriated.’
    • ‘After about 1831 you had to get legal approval to release slaves.’
    • ‘For most American slaves, forced relocation south was anathema and often the first impetus for their flight to Canada.’
    • ‘Each clan had many slaves, much property, and great political power.’
    • ‘What this meant in terms of the slaves ' legal status was unclear.’
    • ‘So instead of owning the property, former slaves who wanted to stay there had to work for the former slaveholders.’
    • ‘This was recognition that insurance companies made profits insuring slaves as property.’
    • ‘All kinds of property including slaves are inheritable by relatives.’
    • ‘Technically Roman slaves were the property, the chattels, of their owners, held in a state of total subjection.’
    • ‘Property rights in slaves and their labor can be bought and sold via market transactions.’
    • ‘He understands his position, while a slave, as transportable property.’
    • ‘To say that a slave is simply the property or another does not adequately describe the condition of bonded dependents in an African context.’
    bondsman, bondswoman, bondservant, bondslave, serf, vassal, thrall
    View synonyms
    1. 1.1A person who works very hard without proper remuneration or appreciation.
      ‘by the time I was ten, I had become her slave, doing all the housework’
      • ‘The media joked that men would become domestic slaves to working women.’
      • ‘Citizens enjoy being lackeys and slaves to rich folks.’
      • ‘Many women are virtual slaves to their pimps, snared by false protestations of love, and then held in his thrall by a combination of violence and spurious affection.’
      • ‘Because in the end, the workers became the slaves of the communist masters.’
      • ‘Her solicitor claimed that Smith's wife was his slave.’
      • ‘In all reality, I was his slave.’
      drudge, servant, general factotum, maid of all work, man of all work, lackey, minion, galley slave
      View synonyms
    2. 1.2A person who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something.
      ‘the poorest people of the world are slaves to the banks’
      • ‘she was no slave to fashion’
      • ‘He insists designers must look to the future or become slaves to the past.’
      • ‘But it is wrong to become a slave to food or to let it control you.’
      • ‘I am a free man, not a number; not a slave to silly ideas, not all that crazy and not one to suffer fools gladly!’
      • ‘Many people think that if there's something in the genome that controls our lives we're slaves to it.’
      • ‘The universe is clearly a slave to the numbers - as long as you selectively pick the numbers and make up the rules for their accumulation, after the fact.’
      • ‘I work very hard - in fact, I've had to work like a slave because I was a slave to drugs.’
      • ‘The choice of a slave to Russia versus a slave to the West may not be a great one, but the will of the people must prevail.’
      • ‘As Sir James Steuart commented in 1767, ‘men are forced to labour now because they are slaves to their own wants’.’
      • ‘And as for domestic animals, they are total slaves to the whims of others.’
      • ‘America was the world's first nation to set up a system in which individuals owned their government - as opposed to the rest of the world were people remained slaves to their rulers.’
      • ‘The exhibition reminds the viewers how the innocence of the tribals was cruelly exploited by those from the cities, how a large body of the tribal population became slaves to alcohol.’
      • ‘The day we lose our rebellious streak against ridiculous restrictions is the day we allow ourselves to become slaves to political correctness and the elites of Dublin and Europe.’
      • ‘But that was in an era when women, like men, were slaves to convention.’
      • ‘In many places where there is no transferable title that is recognized nation-wide, people are in effect slaves to a traditional plot of land.’
      • ‘Such people, of course, rarely will admit being slaves to fashion.’
      • ‘We should want people to have more choice in how they lead their lives, rather than being slaves to their physical reactions.’
      • ‘It seems these slaves to efficiency have mastered the age-old art of time maximization like no others of our generation.’
      • ‘Why do we allow ourselves to become slaves to narcotics?’
      • ‘We don't want to forget the past, but we don't want to remain slaves of the past.’
      • ‘So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves.’

  • 2A device, or part of one, directly controlled by another.

    Compare with master

    as modifier ‘a slave cassette deck’
    • ‘The link slave devices and the link controller include protocol logic for communication according to a bidirectional protocol.’
    • ‘The arbiter device receives requests for data transfers from the master devices and selectively transmits the requests to the slave devices.’
    • ‘Power down your old computer, and install the new drive as a slave device to your old drive.’
    • ‘This cylinder is actually a slave cylinder that is hydraulically interconnected to the big lift cylinder on the main boom.’
    • ‘That is to say that a slave antenna is calibrated with reference to another one considered as the reference antenna.’
    • ‘Furthermore, the master also controls when devices transmit data, since slaves can only transmit when scheduled by the master.’
    • ‘If the master fails, we have a way to switch to a slave machine quickly and with minimal data loss, if any.’
    • ‘Data lock is achieved by making sure that the slave machines in the cluster are on the correct eye when the parallel port is in a certain state.’
    • ‘The controller acts as a liaison between the slave work processor and the master, leaving the work processor to concentrate solely on data processing.’
    • ‘The technology would also eliminate the need for master / slave jumpers on devices to simplify installation.’
    • ‘This connection strategy also negates the need for master / slave jumper settings on devices.’
    • ‘In this case the slave machine acquires the resources after the ten-second node timeout occurs, as shown in the log excerpt.’
    • ‘Only registered users are able to upload code to the slave machines.’
    • ‘What happens next is pretty cool but is hidden from the user (unless you hook up a monitor to a slave node).’
    • ‘Each of the slave nodes has a timer programmed with a separate failure mode detection time period.’
    • ‘One node is designated as the master node controlling the scheduling of the slave nodes and all communications with the outside world.’
    • ‘Fortunately, a slave pin is included in the kit.’
    • ‘Each of the slave processors calculates the likelihood of the tree, given a set of parameters.’
    • ‘I believe the source of my problem is that I installed the second hard drive as slave on the secondary IDE.’
    • ‘I first installed Linux when my hard drive was a primary slave.’

verb

  • 1no object Work excessively hard.

    ‘after slaving away for fourteen years all he gets is two thousand’
    • ‘I haven't got time to spend hours slaving over a hot stove’
    • ‘We are having sound and plasma screens in all the rooms, and we won't have to spend weekends slaving over DIY.’
    • ‘You've been slaving over dinosaur details for days on end.’
    • ‘But when I got home, Justin had obviously spent all day slaving away, making a 3 course dinner.’
    • ‘She's spent five years slaving away for her millionaire real estate tycoon tyrant of a boss - and she's sick of it!’
    • ‘They had heard about aboriginal writers slaving away somewhere out there on new scripts for theatre, but where were they all hiding?’
    • ‘After slaving over a business plan, the pair applied to the Prince's Trust for a loan and were awarded the money in February 2000.’
    • ‘For months I had seen people slaving away behind newspaper-covered windows that only allowed for a peek.’
    • ‘She was scrubbing floors and slaving away to pay for food and lodging.’
    • ‘It will be the crowning moment of countless hours spent slaving away in his extended garage.’
    • ‘I mean, I've only been slaving away at it for the past two weeks.’
    • ‘When you're slaving away on perfecting your own projects, to see someone else exhibit that care and that passion, even in an entirely different field, is a pleasure.’
    • ‘It's so warm out and since I was slaving away in the hot kitchen, I opened up the windows to get some air circulating.’
    • ‘Still, after a day slaving away at a hot computer terminal, I vowed to go home and bash away on at least one design tonight.’
    • ‘Admittedly, it gets a little boring at times, but that suits me just fine, because at least I'm not slaving away at some unfulfilling, low-paying job that I probably wouldn't be good at anyway.’
    • ‘I'd feel bad knowing you were slaving away your Saturday.’
    • ‘I've been slaving over this one - really, I have!’
    • ‘And I'll be stuck slaving away in some moldy old courtroom, wondering ‘what if?’’
    • ‘We were back at his house, slaving away at homework.’
    • ‘Why slave long and hard in the kitchen, when you can make this salad in minutes, leaving you free to concentrate on the one you love!’
    • ‘It keeps us working forever, chained to our desks slaving day after day to pay for it.’
    toil, labour, grind, sweat, work one's fingers to the bone, work day and night, work like a dog, work like a Trojan, keep one's nose to the grindstone, exert oneself, grub, plod, plough
    View synonyms

  • 2with object Subject (a device) to control by another.

    ‘should the need arise, the two channels can be slaved together’
    • ‘The helmet measures the pilot's line of sight to the target so the sensors, avionics and weapons are slaved to the target.’
    • ‘The commander has the option of handing off the target to the gunner or of slaving the gun to the commander's sight and initiating the fire.’
    • ‘During flight the missile is automatically slaved at about 0.5m above the line-of-sight to avoid obstacles.’
    • ‘Another aspect that necessitates some planning is that the thermisters and fan controllers are slaved together in pairs.’
    • ‘The control system on the Moon can be slaved to individual receivers on Earth.’
    • ‘You would be infecting the new machine when you slaved the drive.’
    • ‘An optional servo-controlled overhead weapons platform can be slaved to the commander's sight to allow operation independent from the turret.’
    • ‘In addition the gunner's primary sight is slaved to the main gun, which does not allow the gunner to acquire targets in a hull-down posture.’
    • ‘In the second mode, the mobile terminal slaves its user pilot to the pilot it receives from the base station and the user data channel is synchronized with this slaved user pilot.’
    • ‘It worked like a charm too - slaving the targeting telemetry.’
    • ‘The roof sighting system is slaved to the pilot's helmet and as soon as a target is identified the fire-resolution computers calculate the future position of the target and aim the cannon at that future position.’
    • ‘Modern combat was too fast for anything like that anymore, so the turret was permanently slaved to the co-pilot's seat.’
    • ‘Slave your targeting telemetry to mine and wait for my command to fire.’

  • 3archaic with object Make (someone) a slave; enslave.

Origin

Middle English shortening of Old French esclave, equivalent of medieval Latin sclava (feminine) ‘Slavonic (captive)’ the Slavonic peoples had been reduced to a servile state by conquest in the 9th century.