slave / slāv/ • n. chiefly hist. 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 adj.] 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.• v. [intr.] work excessively hard: after slaving away for fourteen years, all he gets is two thousand. ∎  [tr.] subject (a device) to control by another: should the need arise, the two channels can be slaved together.

slave a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. The word comes in Middle English from a shortening of Old French esclave, equivalent of medieval Latin sclava ‘Slavonic (captive)’: the Slavonic peoples had been reduced to a servile state by conquest in the 9th century.
Slave Coast part of the west coast of Africa, between the Volta River and Mount Cameroon, from which slaves were exported in the 16th–19th centuries.
Slave Kings a dynasty founded by a former slave, Qutb uddin Aibak, which ruled the Delhi Sultanate from 1206 to 1290.
Slave of the Lamp in the story of Aladdin, a genie summoned by rubbing a magic lamp and bound to perform the wishes of the lamp's possessor.
Slave State any of the Southern states of the US in which slavery was legal before the Civil War.

See also better be an old man's darling than a young man's slave, white slave.

slave XIII. ME. sclave, aphetic — (O)F. esclave, prop. fem. of esclaf — medL. sclavus, -va, identical with the ethnic name Sclavus SLAV, the Slavonic races having been reduced to a servile state by conquest.
Hence slavery XVI. slavey †male servant or attendant; female domestic servant. XIX; see -Y4. slavish XVI.