Enslavements

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The process of coercively restricting individuals' freedom or rights through ownership or forced labor
2. The systematic act of imposing servitude on individuals, stripping them of autonomy and human rights
3. The condition of being held in forced labor or controlled without freedom

Etymology: The word "slave" carries a surprise that goes back to a people's name. Medieval Greek "Sklabos" and Late Latin "sclavus" were used for Slavs, the Slavic-speaking peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Latin form was applied to captives taken from them in the wars and raids of the early Middle Ages. Over time "sclavus" came to mean a person held in bondage, and that sense passed into Old French "esclave" and then Middle English "sclave," the ancestor of modern "slave." The ethnic name and the word for a captive are, in other words, the same word. English then built "enslave" from "slave" by adding the prefix "en-", meaning "to put into" a state or condition, so that to enslave someone is to put them into slavery. The noun "enslavement" was formed from that verb by adding the suffix "-ment," which turns a verb into a noun naming the act or process. This is a plain, transparent formation: "enslavement" names the act of reducing someone to slavery, and its plural names repeated or multiple such acts.

Synonyms: bondage, captivity, subjugation

Antonyms: freedom, liberation