concubine

From Middle English concubine (first attested 1250–1300), from Anglo-Norman concubine, from Latin concubīna, equivalent to concub- (variant stem of concumbō (“to lie together”)) + feminine suffix -īna.

He ſhall be made a chaſte and luſtleſſe Eunuch,
And in my Sarell tend my Concubines:

c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:

And the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge. And the men of Gibeah rose against me, and beset the house round about upon me by night, and thought to have slain me: and my concubine have they forced, that she is dead. And I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel: for they have committed lewdness and folly in Israel.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Judges 20:4–6:

Solomon, who was one of the Deity's favorities, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines.

c. 1909, Mark Twain, “Letter VIII”, in Letters from the Earth:

(chiefly historical) A slave-girl or woman, kept for instance in a harem, who is held for sexual service.


thrall

en-noun

thrall (countable and uncountable, plural thralls)

From Middle English thral, thralle, threl, threlle, from Old English þrǣl (“thrall, slave, servant”), from Old Norse þræll (“slave”), from Proto-Germanic *þrahilaz, *þragilaz, *þrigilaz (“runner, gofer, servant”), from Proto-Indo-European *trāgʰ- (“to pull, drag, race, run”); according to ODS probably related to Gothic 𐌸𐍂𐌰𐌲𐌾𐌰𐌽 (þragjan), Old English þrǣġan (“to run”).

der

My servant, which that is my thrall by right

1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “(please specify the story)”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, →OCLC:

Hereat its Marid appeared and said to him, "Adsum! thy thrall between thy hands is come: ask of me whatso thou wantest."

1885–1888, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar edition, volume (please specify the volume), [London]: […] Burton Club […], →OCLC:

And there were household slaves in golden collars that burned of a plenty there with her, and nine female thralls, and eight male slaves of the Angles that were of gentle birth and battle-captured.

One who is enslaved or under mind control.

in thrall to

Go: release him from the thrall of Hautia.

[Y]our friend, John Edward, is at the other end of the room with his whole soul held in thrall by photographs of other people's relatives.

1889, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 12, in Three Men in a Boat […] :

In her brain she was dimly conscious of balancing, or striving to balance, the abject shame which had him now in thrall against the one compelling act of courage which had flung him grandly and madly on to the point of danger.

A more enlightened Conservative prime minister, better attuned to the “one nation” tradition of the party of Disraeli and Macmillan, less in thrall to Little Englanders, and less intimidated by the peculiarly vicious and Manichaean worldview of the Daily Mail, would have taken a more consensual approach.

2017 March 27, “The Observer view on triggering article 50”, in The Observer:

Labour needs to engage positively with the unions on wider policy issues, but not be in thrall with them.

2022 November 16, Paul Salveson, “Labour and transport: the important role of the regions”, in RAIL, number 970, page 31:

(uncountable) The state of being under the control of another person.


thrall

en-adj

thrall (comparative more thrall, superlative most thrall)

more thrall (comparative)
most thrall (superlative)

Rather than to live thrall, under the awe
Of lordly lokes, wrapped within my cloke […]


thrall

en-verb

thrall (third-person singular simple present thralls, present participle thralling, simple past and past participle thralled)

thralls (present singular third-person)
thralling (participle present)
thralled (participle past)
thralled (past)

From Middle English thrallen, from the noun above. Compare Old Norse þræla.


serf

From Middle English serf, from Old French serf, from Latin servus (“slave, serf, servant”).


mammy

That's what you for—to help white folks keep niggers down. That's why he sent you to me. They be calling you mammy in a few years. You be running the whole house when the old man dies.

(US, historical, often pejorative) In the southern United States, a black nanny employed to look after white children; or in the antebellum South, a female slave who was close to the household and looked after the children.


human chattel

Where is the man of intelligence who does not instantly see that this provision of human law […] makes the relation, between father and mother, that of mere agents for increasing the gains of him who claims a right of property in the human chattel, whose offspring, by law, are his?

1863, Harper Twelvetrees, preface to The Story of the Life of John Anderson, the Fugitive Slave, William Tweedie (publisher), page ix

Human beings considered property, that is, slaves.


bondsman

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-bondsman.wav


slave-girl

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-slave-girl.wav

A female required to perform sexual acts, a sex slave.


helot

From Latin Hīlōta, from Ancient Greek Εἵλωτες (Heílōtes), possibly from ἁλίσκομαι (halískomai, “to be captured, to be made prisoner”) or from Ἕλος (Hélos, “Elos”), a Laconian town.

A man who conceives and writes a great book, my friend, has done more work than all the helots that laboured on these pyramidal futilities.

1910 January 12, Ameen Rihani, “Probing the Trivial”, in The Book of Khalid, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published October 1911, →OCLC, book the first (In the Exchange), pages 10–11:

All wore a costume suggestive of a more tranquil and prosperous age than this — Dame Clara Butt singing, in a voice not quite so deep as Arumugam's, 'Land of Hope and Glory', the gold squeezed from tropical helots enhancing the upper-class comforts of a cold climate.

1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 611:

“In part, the blame falls on the corporate elite,” Barbara Ehrenreich wrote back in 1989, “which demands ever more bankers and lawyers, on the one hand, and low-paid helots on the other.” These low-paid helots are now unpaid interns and networked amateurs.

2014, Astra Taylor, quoting Barbara Ehrenreich, chapter 2, in The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN:


odalisque

Borrowed from French odalisque, from Ottoman Turkish اوطهلق (odalık, “chambermaid”), from اوده (oda, “room”).

der

When the young Mauretanians were his guests in the little houses before the town gates, and he was of a good humour, it would come about that he displayed his odalisques as others would their jewels.

1947 [1939], Ernst Jünger, translated by Stuart Hood, On the Marble Cliffs, New Directions, translation of Auf den Marmorklippen (in German), →LCCN, →OCLC, page 12:

Though I could see the titan odalisques and their garden and knew them to be no more than dream-stuff recalled, I could not escape from their fascination and the memory of the dream.

1981, Gene Wolfe, chapter VIII, in The Claw of the Conciliator (The Book of the New Sun; 2), New York: Timescape, →ISBN, page 72:

The Sector is borne in a padded Waggon, like some mechanickal Odalisque.

1997, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 30, in Mason & Dixon, 1st US edition, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, part Two: America, page 296:

(historical) A female slave in a harem, especially one in the Ottoman seraglio.


peon

From a combination of Middle French pion, peon and Spanish peón, both from Late Latin pedōnem (“pedestrian”). Doublet of pawn.

(India, historical) A messenger, foot soldier, or native policeman.


sex slave

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-sex slave.wav


comfort woman

Calque from Japanese 慰(い)安(あん)婦(ふ) (ianfu).

She carefully watches the efforts of Koreans who are suing Japan to get reparations for the comfort women. It was only in 1993 that Japan formally recognized its involvement in the forced prostitution.

1995 September 10, Jane H. Lii, “The Memories of a Comfort Woman”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

(idiomatic, historical, euphemistic) A woman forced, or supposedly recruited, into brothels by the Japanese occupation forces before or during World War II.


comfort girl

(idiomatic, euphemistic) A female sex slave; prostitute.

Those who have met me taking their photos have seen nothing but yoga pants and a pony tail—and probably flip flops if it was a beach session! But although on the day to day I am a comfort girl through and through, especially when chasing littles and squatting at a seconds notice to “get the shot.”

2019 January 4, (Please provide the book title or journal name), archived from the original on 2024-04-29:

(fashion) A girl or woman who wears comfortable clothes.


bozal

From Spanish bozal (“recently-imported slave; noseband”). Doublet of bossale and bosal.

bossale

slave born in Africa, especially in a French colony

(historical) A (black) slave recently brought to a (European, especially Spanish) colony from Africa.

The more tightly these nosebands are attached, the more the horse is likely to raise his head and nose. For ordinary pleasure riding, attach this equipment to allow one or two fingers sideways between the bozal and the underside of the jaw.

2005, Lee Ziegler, Easy-Gaited Horses: Gentle, humane methods for training and riding gaited pleasure horses, Storey Publishing, →ISBN, page 54:

(uncommon) Alternative form of bosal (“noseband on a horse”)


bozal

(historical) Of a slave, recently brought to a colony from Africa.


bosal

From Spanish bosal, variant of bozal (“noseband; slave”). (The sense "noseband" is specifically via Mexican Spanish and was originally found in the Southwestern US.) Doublet of bozal and bossale.

At about the same time Christian Georg Andreas Oldendorp, a Moravian missionary in the Danish West Indies, recorded that some Kongos on the island performed "a certain type of baptism on the bosals [recently arrived slaves] who desire it."

2009, Bernard Bailyn, Patricia L Denault, Soundings in Atlantic History, page 108:

(uncommon) Alternative form of bozal or bossale (slave born in Africa and recently brought to a colony).


bondslave

To whom they shewed, how those marchants were / Arriv'd in place their bondslaves for to buy […].

1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

One who works as a slave under an indenture; a bondsman or bondswoman.


indentured servant

en-noun

indentured servant (plural indentured servants)

He traced back to Alfred Standing, an indentured servant, or slave if you please, who was transported from England to the Virginia plantations in the days that were even old when the youthful Washington went a-surveying in the Pennsylvania wilderness.

1915, Jack London, chapter 1, in The Star Rover:

Probably the best known of these was John Harrower, whose journal provides a fascinating insight into the life of a schoolmaster and indentured servant in late colonial Virginia.[…]He arrived in London virtually destitute and, unable to find work, soon contracted to work as an indentured servant in Virginia as a means of escaping unemployment and poverty.

2004, David Dobson, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607–1785, University of Georgia Press, →ISBN, page 149:

Like the others, however, he owed the contractual time to his master, who could sell the indentured servant, along with any debts owed by the servant, to someone else.

2015, Gwyn Campbell, Alessandro Stanziani, editors, Bonded Labour and Debt in the Indian Ocean World, Routledge, →ISBN:

The book detailed how the Irish, who had first come to North America as indentured servants and were reviled by the more settled populations of English and Dutch Americans, became, by the mid-19th century, accepted as white.

2019 November 12, Sewell Chan, “Noel Ignatiev, scholar who called for abolishing whiteness, dies at 78”, in Los Angeles Times:

(chiefly historical) A debt bondage worker who is under contract of an employer for a specified period of time, in exchange for transportation, food, drink, clothing, lodging, and other necessities.


love slave

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-love slave.wav

A slave whose duties include love and/or being available for sex.


pussyboy

Ted is such a pussy boy fleeing whenever there is danger or drama, or even a spider!

(slang, derogatory) An especially cowardly or otherwise unmanly young man.


prison bitch

What kind of life can a prison bitch expect to lead once he is released?

2004, Alexander Cockburn, Serpents in the garden: liaisons with culture & sex, page 273:

What's the tattoo for a prison bitch? A rabbit? A pansy? Maybe,” she added scornfully, “a nice big bull's eye tattooed right on your ass

2007, Gil Snider, Brain Warp: A Medical Thriller, page 255:

“More like the big house,” Tyree snapped. “Mama, I don't wanna end up a prison bitch,” Cecile cried.

2009, R.A. Melos, The Adventures of Homosexual Man and Lesbian Ladd, page 79:

(prison slang) A male prisoner used as a sex slave by another man in the absence of available women.


house nigger

By analogy with slaves that worked predominantly indoors during US slavery who were trained with more skills than basic field hands or plantation niggers.

If massa was sick, house nigger would come 'round and say, “Massa we sick, ain't we?

2008, Julia L. Mickenberg, Philip Nel, Tales for little rebels: a collection of radical children's literature, page 195:

(dated, now offensive) A black slave that worked as a domestic as opposed to manual laborer.


farm nigger

Coordinate term: house nigger

(dated, now offensive) A black slave employed in manual labor.


plantation nigger

plantation nigger (plural plantation niggers)

(dated, ethnic slur) A slave employed in manual labor, as opposed to a house nigger.


black ivory

(historical, euphemistic) Black slaves, regarded as cargo in the slave trade.


house slave

A slave who works in a home, performing domestic duties rather than fieldwork or other hard labor.


field slave

A slave whose duties primarily entail working in a field, such as in agriculture, as opposed to a house slave.


lampadarius

From Latin lampada, from Ancient Greek λαμπάς (lampás, “candle”).

(Christianity) The leader of the second (left) choir of singers in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.


bossale

From French bossale, from Spanish bozal (“wild, untamed, raw; born in Africa and recently enslaved in a colony”). Doublet of bozal and bosal.

m+

In Louisiana, French colonists relied on bossales later than elsewhere as they first imposed the slavery system on Amerindians only. The first slave ship carrying Africans arrived in 1719 […]

2019, Aline Helg, Slave No More: Self-Liberation before Abolitionism in the Americas, UNC Press Books, →ISBN, page 76:

(historical) A black African-born enslaved person in a French (or sometimes other European) colony, especially Haiti (as opposed to a slave born in the colony).

bozal

slave recently brought from Africa to a Spanish or other European colony


theow

From Middle English theu, thewe (“servant; one bound in service to another, serf; disciple or servant of God; created being; servant of the devil; (figuratively) servant to sin, wealth, etc.”) [and other forms], from Old English þēow, þēo (“servant; slave”) [and other forms], from Proto-West Germanic *þeu (“slave”), from Proto-Germanic *þewaz, *þegwaz (“servant; slave”), from Proto-Indo-European *tekwos (“runner”), from Proto-Indo-European *tekʷ- (“to run; to flow”).
Cognates
* Dutch dienen (“to serve”)
* German dienen (“to serve”)
* Gothic 𐌸𐌹𐌿𐍃 (þius, “bondman, slave; servant”)
* Old English þegn (“servant; minister; vassal”)
* Old High German dio (“unfree”), diu (“servant”)

nb...

theuwe, thiu, thiwe, yeu, (Early Middle English) thue, þeou, þeowe, þeoww, þeu, þeue, þewe, þeww, ðeowæ

þeowe (feminine), ðea, ðeua, ðiow, ðiowa, ðiua, ðiuwa

cog

(historical) A bondman or bondwoman; a slave.