enslave
/ɪnˈsleɪv
/ /ɛnˈsleɪv/verb [with object]
1Make (someone) a slave: the practice of enslaving prisoners of war eventually died out...
- If you have a religion, a belief system or a traditional practice that enslaves people, puts them in servitude and reduces their dignity, then you violate our national constitution.
- Why should we support religiously intolerant regimes that virtually enslave women and persecute nonbelievers to death?
- Just as they are bond slaves to sin, so they seek to enslave us similarly.
Synonyms
sell into slavery, condemn to slavery, take away someone's human rights, disenfranchise, condemn to servitude;
subject to forced labour;
subjugate, hegemonize, suppress, tyrannize, oppress, dominate, exploit, persecute
rare enthral, bind, yoke
1.1Cause (someone) to lose their freedom of choice or action: they were enslaved by their need to take drugs...
- Tyrants rise and enslave the spirit of freedom.
- He said today's youth had to pursue freedom in order to avoid being enslaved by crime and drugs.
- People who are enslaved to work do have a choice, and if they were as smart as they like to think they are, they should spend more time at home.
Derivatives
enslaver
- Plato remarks in the Republic that the great liberator is also the great enslaver: and this was the hard political text learned by Romantic poets through most of Coleridge's lifetime.
- The ‘bully’ survived all of his enslavers and turned the barren Sinai Desert into a fertile, agricultural area, not being hand in glove with anybody, as explained in the eighth stanza.
- He seems at this point to affirm the religious perspective of his enslavers: He condemns himself and assumes that he is unworthy, even as he prays for divine deliverance.
Origin
Early 17th century (in the sense 'make (a person) subject to a superstition, passion, etc.'; formerly also as inslave): from en-1, in-2 (as an intensifier) + slave.