slave owner

noun

variants or less commonly slaveowner

ˈslāv-ˌō-nər 

plural slave owners also slaveowners

: someone who holds one or more people involuntarily and under threat of violence within a system of chattel slavery : slaveholder

As the fugitive slave and later abolitionist James W. C. Pennington noted, every change in the financial, social, and personal affairs of a slave owner and his or her children could have traumatic consequences for enslaved people.

—Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

… as the debate about reparations for slavery intensifies, it is important to remember that slaveowners, far more than enslaved people, were always the primary beneficiaries of public largess.

—Tera W. Hunter

Examples of slave owner in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Last summer, descendants of enslaved Africans and descendants of the slave owner who bankrolled their voyage to America sat down together in a historic meeting to talk about reconciliation, after years of effort to set up a meeting. —CBS News, 12 Aug. 2024

For slave owners, owning an enslaved woman was an intergenerational wealth-building activity. —Trevon Logan, The Conversation, 10 June 2024

The Johns Hopkins University changed the name of an English professorship named after the wife of one of Maryland’s prominent slave owners. —Lilly Price, Baltimore Sun, 21 Feb. 2024

Saunt does an incredible job of linking northern financiers to southern slave owners and both to the process of Indian removal. —David Treuer, Foreign Affairs, 9 June 2020

Word History

First Known Use

1789, in the meaning defined above