slave 1 of 2

1
as in servant
a person who is considered the property of another person many American slaves reached freedom in the North through the network known as the Underground Railroad

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2
as in laborer
a person who does very hard or dull work unappreciated office slaves who perform the necessary but tedious task of filing paperwork

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slave

2 of 2

verb

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of slave
Noun
The Danes abolished the practice after a slave rebellion in 1848, which led to conditions where a forced sale of the Islands actually benefited Denmark. Michael Loria, USA Today, 4 Apr. 2025 The title is borrowed from Elizabeth Alexander’s fourth collection persona poems, historical narratives, jazz riffs, sonnets, elegies, and a sequence of ars poetica which examines the Black experience through the lens of the slave rebellion on the Amistad and nineteenth-century American art. Natasha Gural, Forbes.com, 4 Apr. 2025
Verb
The scholars borrow from critical theory—including a Marxist focus on the alienation of labor and postmodern pessimism—with some going so far as to compare the resorts to slave plantations. Richard Feinberg, Foreign Affairs, 10 Dec. 2019 During the latter half of that period, according to Marques’s review of British consular reports, more than one-third of all slaving vessels that made landfall in Rio de Janeiro did so under an American flag. Rafael Vilela, Washington Post, 31 Mar. 2024 See All Example Sentences for slave
Recent Examples of Synonyms for slave
Noun
  • The document emphasizes the pope as a servant of Christ and bishop of Rome, rather than a worldly sovereign.
    Thomas G. Moukawsher, MSNBC Newsweek, 25 Apr. 2025
  • There is no greater goal than to hear, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant’ from Jesus.
    Maureen Mackey, FOXNews.com, 21 Apr. 2025
Noun
  • Engels wrote about the emergence of this group of laborers in his 1845 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England.
    Lauren Frayer, NPR, 19 Apr. 2025
  • Some came as agricultural, mining or railway laborers; others served in the British administration or in the Brigade of Gorkhas, an organization in the British Army made up of people from Nepal.
    Emily Fishbein, Hpan Ja Brang, The Dial, 17 Apr. 2025
Verb
  • When Michele Romano went missing last August, her family and their close friend, podcaster Lauren Lee Malloy, labored over flyers bearing her image: a woman with a gentle smile and a spill of braids, wrapped in a cozy, pale rainbow cardigan.
    Brenna Ehrlich, Rolling Stone, 25 Apr. 2025
  • In the early years of the Syrian civil war, Fidan and Erdogan labored to overthrow and install a Sunni regime aligned with Ankara.
    Sinan Ciddi and Jonathan Schanzer, MSNBC Newsweek, 23 Apr. 2025
Noun
  • And that’s exactly what Hub gets when attempting to arrest two criminals who have escaped bail, but who end up catching the bondsman off-guard, shooting him with a shotgun blast (a bulletproof vest saves his life) and then ultimately slitting his throat with a knife.
    Demetrius Patterson, HollywoodReporter, 9 Apr. 2025
  • Hub is a second-generation bondsman, having followed in the footsteps of his acerbic mother — and, as a middle-aged divorcée, roommate — Kitty (Beth Grant).
    Alison Herman, Variety, 3 Apr. 2025
Noun
  • Mental health workers in small towns find such promises hard to trust after seeing local services come and go for years.
    CBS News, CBS News, 28 Apr. 2025
  • At the same time that Bass is proposing cuts to the Equity Bureau, her budget calls for an overall increase in Fire Department workers.
    Noah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 28 Apr. 2025
Verb
  • And their struggling offense is becoming a major concern.
    Jaylon Thompson, Kansas City Star, 18 Apr. 2025
  • While Target has been struggling to grow its sales for months as shoppers watch their spending, the stretch of declining visits came as some civil rights groups and social media users criticized the DEI decision and urged shoppers to spend their money elsewhere.
    Gabrielle Fonrouge,Melissa Repko, CNBC, 17 Apr. 2025
Verb
  • If a cell harbors many black morphogens, for example, and a neighboring cell harbors few of them, then the molecules strive to move such that they are distributed as evenly as possible.
    Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 16 Apr. 2025
  • The school could strive for excellence and integrity while doing fewer things.
    Jeannie Suk Gersen, New Yorker, 15 Apr. 2025
Noun
  • Enslavers often viewed them as mere chattel and not worth the expense and effort of commissioning a painting.
    Kate McMahon, The Conversation, 3 Feb. 2025
  • The game is the system that keeps one as chattel for the other.
    Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 26 Dec. 2024

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Cite this Entry

“Slave.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/slave. Accessed 1 May. 2025.

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