Word of the day: slave |slāv| nounchiefly historical a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. • a person who works very hard without proper remuneration or appreciation: by the time I was ten, I had become her slave, doing all the housework. • a person who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something: the poorest people of the world are slaves to the banks | she was no slave to fashion. • a device, or part of one, directly controlled by another: [ as modifier ] : a slave cassette deck. Compare with master1. • an ant captured in its pupal state by an ant of another species, for which it becomes a worker. verb [ no obj. ] work excessively hard: after slaving away for fourteen years, all he gets is two thousand. • [ with obj. ] subject (a device) to control by another: should the need arise, the two channels can be slaved together. ORIGIN Middle English: shortening of Old French esclave, equivalent of medieval Latin sclava (feminine) ‘Slavic (captive)’: some South Slavic peoples had been reduced to a servile state by conquest in the 9th cent.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 06:29:48 +0000
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