slave owner
Keeper of bondspeople
A slave owner is a person who legally possesses other human beings as property.
The term appears in historical contexts—American plantation slavery, ancient Rome, the antebellum South—where enslaving people was lawful: The slave owners of Virginia relied on tobacco cultivation.
The compound emphasizes the property relationship: not merely someone who controls enslaved people, but one who claims legal title to them.
Movable personal property
- bondageInvoluntary subjugation to another
- auctionCompetitive public sale
- manaclesWrist shackles for prisoners
- abolitionistOpponent of human bondage
emancipation · rebellion · fugitive · indentured · servitude · trade · Middle Passage · abolition
Authority or controller
- exploiterOne who uses unfairly
- taskmasterStrict work supervisor
- subjugatorOne who dominates others
- tyrantCruel, absolute ruler
persecutor · abuser · dominator · supremacist · brutality · cruelty · dehumanization · violence
Large-scale farming operation
- manorLanded aristocratic residence
- overseerOne who monitors work
- Southern belleRefined woman from Dixie
- ConfederacySecessionist Southern government
secession · gentility · aristocracy · cotton · tobacco · sugar · mistress · colonial
chattel
Movable personal property
- bondageInvoluntary subjugation to another
- auctionCompetitive public sale
- manaclesWrist shackles for prisoners
abolitionist · emancipation · rebellion · fugitive · indentured · servitude · trade · Middle Passage · abolition · Frederick Douglass
master
Authority or controller
- exploiterOne who uses unfairly
- taskmasterStrict work supervisor
- subjugatorOne who dominates others
tyrant · persecutor · abuser · dominator · supremacist · brutality · cruelty · dehumanization · violence · punishment
plantation
Large-scale farming operation
- manorLanded aristocratic residence
- overseerOne who monitors work
- Southern belleRefined woman from Dixie
Confederacy · secession · gentility · aristocracy · cotton · tobacco · sugar · mistress · colonial · economy
- ownershomeowners, landlords, shareholders, proprietors, landlord
- Antebellum Southplantation, cotton kingdom, overseer, big house, plantation house
- George Washingtonfirst president, Mount Vernon, founding father, Continental Army, crossing the Delaware
- Roman societypatrician, patricians, plebeian, plebeians, citizen
- tyrantsHitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin
slave ownerslave
Owned human, forced laborer
bondsman · bondservant · chattel · serf · thrall
slave ownerabolitionist
Opponent of human bondage
emancipator · freedom fighter · liberator · Harriet Tubman · Frederick Douglass
slave owneremployer
One who employs others
employee · hired hand · worker · contractor
slave, owner, slaves, slaved, slaving, slavery, slavish, slavishly, enslave