slave labor

noun

variants US slave labor or chiefly British slave labour

1

: work that is done by enslaved people or by people who are treated as though they are enslaved

prisoners being forced to do slave labor

a slave labor camp

2

: enslaved people doing work

The pyramids were built by slave labor.

slave laborer noun

(chiefly US) or chiefly British slave labourer

plural slave laborers

… The Statue of Freedom—the figure of a Native American woman warrior that stands on the dome—was cast in bronze by slave laborers in 1863 and hoisted up there.

—Jack E. White

Examples of slave labor in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But the true evil, the rot that created them, is something embedded in society and the dream of Rome, which, much like the American dream, could not be built without conquest and slave labor. —Richard Newby, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 Nov. 2024

First available in 1957, thalidomide was a product of Chemie Grünenthal, a German drug juggernaut whose leaders included several war criminals, among them an inventor of sarin nerve gas who had been convicted of using slave labor at Auschwitz. —Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 30 Mar. 2024

Since big business not only used Nazi slave labor but had actively supported the regime and its imperialist policies, top industrialists should also be subject to strict denazification. —William E. Scheuerman, Foreign Affairs, 11 June 2013

What is considered the first commercial apple orchard in the state was planted by a Cherokee woman near Maysville prior to the Civil War and maintained through the use of slave labor. —arkansasonline.com, 23 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1802, in the meaning defined at sense 1