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

Where slave labor once made bricks, and thousands lost their lives, the designer crafted a massive concrete monument, completed in 1969. —Michael Allen, The Conversation, 27 Feb. 2025

Brazil also since 2003 has publicly named companies found to engage in slave labor and prohibited them from obtaining public funds. —Troy Aidan Sambajon, The Christian Science Monitor, 24 Feb. 2025

Naor was dispatched to perform slave labor in the network of Dachau’s 140 subcamps. —Massimo Calabresi/dachau, TIME, 22 Feb. 2025

This is Auschwitz-Birkenau, a place where the Nazis treated people like animals caged in by electrified barbed wire, where prisoners died slowly by a combination of slave labor, human experimentation, starvation and disease. —Jesse Kirsch, NBC News, 2 Feb. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1802, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for slave labor

• belabor
• nonlabor
• neighbor
• neighbour
• saber
• sabre
• tabor