an overseer of enslaved laborers and enforcer of hierarchy and discipline in the institution of chattel slavery.
a hard taskmaster.
His boss was a slave driver.
(esp formerly) a person forcing slaves to work
an employer who demands excessively hard work from his employees
An Americanism dating back to 1800–10
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The rebels were led by Charles Deslondes, a mixed-race slave who laboured as a slave driver on Andry’s plantation.
From The Guardian ● May 6, 2019
Perhaps as many five hundred joined the rebellion, led by Charles Deslondes, a mixed-race slave driver on a sugar plantation owned by Manuel Andry.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 30, 2014
Stern, on the other hand, is "a slave driver."
From Time Magazine Archive
He considers the adrenals the "power station" of the sympathetic nervous system, the frontal lobe of the brain as the "slave driver."
From Time Magazine Archive
Mr. Skinner was already at his desk, for he was a slave driver who drove himself fully as hard as he did those under him.
From Cappy Ricks Or, the Subjugation of Matt Peasley by Kyne, Peter B. (Peter Bernard)
It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.”
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 19, 2015
Her staff sometimes found her abrupt, and she could be a slave-driver; there is a story that one gardener resigned after developing frostbite.
From Slate ● Mar. 18, 2015
Report relates that the slave-driver General and his rebel army fortified Dorchester Heights, across the harbor from Boston, in but one March night; and once thus positioned, they commenced shelling the town.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
But on a solitary plantation the temptations and immunities of the slave-driver recur; and I have seen men yield to these, who had safely passed the ordeal of persecution and mobs at home.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 by Various
Alfred had discovered that that usurper, that tyrant, that slave-driver, Mr. Meldrum, was the identical P. Meldrum who had scored the winning try for the Harlequin Football Club against Blackheath on the previous Saturday afternoon.
From A Knight on Wheels by Hay, Ian
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
