enslaved

[en-sleyvd]

adjective

1. made a slave; held in slavery or bondage.

   Enslaved people were seen not as people at all but as commodities to be bought, sold, and exploited.

Other Word Forms

• unenslaved adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of enslaved¹

First recorded in 1660–70; enslave ( def. ) + -ed ² ( def. )

Example Sentences

Southern banks had issued currency backed by enslaved people as collateral, creating a volatile financial system that collapsed when cotton prices fell and land speculation schemes failed.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Full emancipation for enslaved people in the British Empire, excluding some exceptions like the East India Company, was granted by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

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Lucumí is an Afro-Caribbean religion with roots in Yoruba cosmology, formed and sustained by enslaved Africans in Cuba as an act of resistance and remembrance.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

California passed a fugitive slave law — rare among free states — in 1852 that allowed slaveholders to use violence to capture enslaved people who had fled to the Golden State.

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There was no mention anywhere of the Africans abducted and enslaved by these “Christian pilgrims.”

Read more on Salon

Related Words

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• dependent 
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