SLAVERY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does slavery mean? 

• SLAVERY (noun)
  The noun SLAVERY has 3 senses:

1. the state of being under the control of another person

2. the practice of owning slaves

3. work done under harsh conditions for little or no pay

  Familiarity information: SLAVERY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SLAVERY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of being under the control of another person

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

bondage; slavery; thraldom; thrall; thralldom

Hypernyms ("slavery" is a kind of...):

subjection; subjugation (forced submission to control by others)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "slavery"):

bonded labor (a practice in which employers give high-interest loans to workers whose entire families then labor at low wages to pay off the debt; the practice is illegal in the United States)

servitude (state of subjection to an owner or master or forced labor imposed as punishment)

serfdom; serfhood; vassalage (the state of a serf)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The practice of owning slaves

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

slaveholding; slavery

Hypernyms ("slavery" is a kind of...):

pattern; practice (a customary way of operation or behavior)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Work done under harsh conditions for little or no pay

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("slavery" is a kind of...):

labor; labour; toil (productive work (especially physical work done for wages))

Derivation:

slave (work very hard, like a slave)

 Context examples 

Or (so my fond fancy imaged) some accident might meanwhile occur to destroy him and put an end to my slavery for ever.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Indeed! (in a tone of wonder and pity,) I had no idea that the law had been so great a slavery.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them!

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It was on this side that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery.

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

You will give up your governessing slavery at once.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Don't think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the slavery to their circulation and to the business manager to the joy of writing.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The waiting was tiresome and wearing, and at last they grew vexed that Oz should treat them in so poor a fashion, after sending them to undergo hardships and slavery.

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

But I endeavoured to divert him from this design, by many arguments drawn from the topics of policy as well as justice; and I plainly protested, that I would never be an instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery.

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

Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)