ENSLAVE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does enslave mean? 

• ENSLAVE (verb)
  The verb ENSLAVE has 1 sense:

1. make a slave of; bring into servitude

  Familiarity information: ENSLAVE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ENSLAVE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they enslave    ... he / she / it enslaves   
Past simple: enslaved   
Past participle: enslaved   
-ing form: enslaving   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make a slave of; bring into servitude

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "enslave" is one way to...):

subject; subjugate (make subservient; force to submit or subdue)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

enslavement (the act of making slaves of your captives)

 Context examples 

I'll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty to them that are enslaved—your harem inmates amongst the rest.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The king would be the most absolute prince in the universe, if he could but prevail on a ministry to join with him; but these having their estates below on the continent, and considering that the office of a favourite has a very uncertain tenure, would never consent to the enslaving of their country.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Cæsar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

This was all we ever had to do until the Golden Cap fell into the hands of the Wicked Witch of the West, who made us enslave the Winkies, and afterward drive Oz himself out of the Land of the West.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield’s tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

And they enslaved you over again—but not frankly, as the true, noble men would do with weight of their own right arms, but secretly, by spidery machinations and by wheedling and cajolery and lies.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

But as those countries which I have described do not appear to have any desire of being conquered and enslaved, murdered or driven out by colonies, nor abound either in gold, silver, sugar, or tobacco, I did humbly conceive, they were by no means proper objects of our zeal, our valour, or our interest.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He mused over the incident after she had gone, and once or twice broke out into laughter that was bitter as he saw his sister and her betrothed, all the members of his own class and the members of Ruth's class, directing their narrow little lives by narrow little formulas—herd-creatures, flocking together and patterning their lives by one another's opinions, failing of being individuals and of really living life because of the childlike formulas by which they were enslaved.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

We passed rapidly along; the sun was hot, but we were sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy while we enjoyed the beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw Mont Salêve, the pleasant banks of Montalègre, and at a distance, surmounting all, the beautiful Mont Blanc, and the assemblage of snowy mountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her; sometimes coasting the opposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the ambition that would quit its native country, and an almost insurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)