slave owner

slave owner — noun

1. a person who owns other people as property, forcing them to work without pay and

1.nounB2
Definition

a person who owns other people as property, forcing them to work without pay and controlling their lives under a system of slavery

Example

Benjamin's great-grandfather was a slave owner in Virginia before the Civil War.

was a slave owner in [place] before [historical event]

Historians analysed how slave owners used violence to control the people they claimed as property.

slave owners used [noun] to control [noun]

Common collocations
  • former slave owner
  • wealthy slave owner
  • slave owner in [place]
  • became a slave owner
Synonyms
  • slaveholder

    the exact synonym; 'slaveholder' is slightly more formal and more common in academic writing

  • enslaver

    a newer term that emphasises the active role of taking people into bondage; preferred in some modern historical scholarship

Usage Note

This term is used in historical contexts to describe individuals in societies that legally permitted the ownership of human beings. In modern discussions of similar coercive labour practices, 'human trafficker' is more appropriate.

Word family

  • slave
    nounB1
  • slavery
    nounB2
  • enslave
    verbB2
  • slaveholder
    nounC1
  • slave-owning
    adjectiveC1
  • slave ownership
    nounC1

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All three terms refer to someone who holds others in bondage, but with different nuances. 'Slaveholder' is the closest synonym to 'slave owner' and is widely used in academic and legal writing. 'Enslaver' has gained traction in recent historical scholarship as a more active term that emphasises the action of enslaving rather than the passive state of owning people. 'Master' was the everyday term used within slave societies themselves, especially by enslaved people referring to the person who controlled them directly. For example, a historian might write 'the slaveholder's plantation records', while an enslaved worker on that same plantation would have called that person 'the master'. 'Slave owner' sits between these registers — it is direct and clear without the clinical distance of 'slaveholder' or the loaded intimacy of 'master'.

enslaver ↗slaveholdermaster ↗

Etymology

Medieval LatinOld FrenchOld EnglishEnglish

The compound 'slave owner' combines 'slave' (from Old French esclave, from Medieval Latin sclavus, originally referring to Slavic people who were enslaved in medieval Europe) with 'owner' (from Old English āgen, meaning 'one who has legal possession'). The term emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries alongside the expansion of the transatlantic slave trade and the legal codification of chattel slavery in European colonies.

First known use

1789

1789, in the meaning defined above