slavey
noun
a female servant, especially a maid of all work in a boardinghouse.
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slavey
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Slavey
Slaveynouna member of a group of Athabascan-speaking First Nations living in the upper Mackenzie River valley region of the Northwest Territories and in parts of British Columbia, Alberta, and the Yukon Territory.
slavey
1 American
[sley-vee]
/ ˈsleɪ vi /
noun
British Informal: Older Use.
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slaveys
plural
Slavey
2
American
[sley-vee]
/ ˈsleɪ vi /
noun
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Slaveys,
plural
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Slavey
plural
Slavey
1
British
/ ˈsleɪvɪ /
noun
slavey
2
British
/ ˈsleɪvɪ /
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of slavey1
First recorded in 1800–10; slave + -y 2
Origin of Slavey2
First recorded in 1785–80; from French esclave, literally, “slave,” a loan translation of Cree awahkān “captive, slave” (the Cree would make raids on and enslave this Athabascan people); the two-syllable pronunciation is a local variant derived from a spelling with the French suffix -ais
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Actress Julie Haydon plays radiantly as the simple-hearted slavey, makes the Canon's conversion entirely credible.
From Time Magazine Archive
She starts as a slavey, advances via an inheritance to the lordly Maxwell Towers, marries the glistening young Earl.
From Time Magazine Archive
At 25, with an ailing husband to support, tiny Mrs. Gilmer was a women's-page slavey on the New Orleans Picayune, where she had started at $5 a week.
From Time Magazine Archive
He rides a thoroughbred mare while making his daughter a slavey; he sneers at the Yankees as vulgar traders while owing them money and enjoying none of their trade.
From Time Magazine Archive
We don't subscribe to anything, or take any truck in parsons; and the slavey has a whitlow on her finger, and mother's having fits over the cooking.
From The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
“It’s nice to come out here and do some good stuff, instead of staying at home watching sports,” said volunteer Robert Slavey.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2019
Slavey, who does marketing for a law firm, and her husband, Robert, left their home in San Diego early Saturday morning, and drove toward Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2017
In the field off Henderson Canyon Road that Slavey had explored with her husband, state park Ranger Steve Bier led a wildlife tour Saturday morning.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2017
Heather Slavey squinted as she stared into the badlands.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2017
"Lady Slavey," Dressler, Marie, 183, 184, 188, 191.
From Famous Prima Donnas by Lewis Clinton Strang
The trades have been full of stories about wholesale firings; panicky studios have cut salaries of office slaveys and minor employees.
From Time Magazine Archive
Ve're chaffed and jeered by every cove, by slaveys on a bus; Our werry watermen are now our masters top of us.
From Punch - Volume 25 (Jul-Dec 1853) by Various
Why those plainclothes men are always courting slaveys.
From Ulysses by James Joyce
How I pity the long procession of "slaveys" who must have followed each other drearily in that lodging-house under the landlady's jurisdiction.
From The Motor Maid by C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
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.
