1(especially in the past) a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.

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’
   More example sentences

   • ‘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.’
   Synonyms

   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’
   More example sentences

   • ‘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.’
3. 1.3A device, or part of one, directly controlled by another.
   Compare with master
   as modifier ‘a slave cassette deck’
   More example sentences

   • ‘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.’

1Work excessively hard.

1. 1.1with object Subject (a device) to control by another.
   ‘should the need arise, the two channels can be slaved together’
   More example sentences

   • ‘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.’