# slavery

Pronunciation: say "SLAY-vuh-ree" /ˈsleɪvəɹi/

## Noun

1. A system or social practice in which people are owned as property, especially for use as forced laborers.
   - Simple: The practice of owning people as property and forcing them to work.
   - _The plantation economy depended almost entirely on slavery for its labor._
   - _Historians continue to study how slavery shaped the nation's wealth._
2. The state of servitude endured by someone held and treated as a slave.
   - Simple: The state of being a slave, owned and controlled by someone else.
   - _The memoir describes his decades of slavery under a brutal master._
   - _She was born into slavery but later purchased her own freedom._
3. Forced labor of any kind, whether or not it is legal.
   - Simple: Hard work that people are forced to do against their will.
   - _Investigators uncovered slavery on fishing boats where men worked without pay._
   - _Modern slavery still traps millions of people in forced labor today._
4. A condition in which one is captivated or subjugated by something such as greed or drugs.
   - Simple: A state where something like greed or drugs controls you completely.
   - _Years of addiction left him in a kind of slavery to the drug._
   - _The poet wrote about humanity's slavery to greed and ambition._

## Adjective

Pronunciation: say "SLAV-uh-ree" /ˈslævəɹi/

5. Covered in saliva running or dribbling from the mouth.
   - Simple: Covered with drool that has dribbled from the mouth.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–4** — Formed from "slave" combined with the suffix "-ery".
**Meaning 5** — Formed from "slaver" combined with the suffix "-y".

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/slavery (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).