slaver

From Middle English slaveren, from Old Norse slafra (“to slaver”), probably imitative. Doublet of slabber.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈslævə/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (US) enPR: slăvʹər, IPA^(key): /ˈslævɚ/
• Rhymes: -ævə(ɹ)

slaver (third-person singular simple present slavers, present participle slavering, simple past and past participle slavered)

1. (intransitive) To drool saliva from the mouth; to slobber.
2. (intransitive) To fawn.
3. (transitive) To smear with saliva issuing from the mouth.
4. To be besmeared with saliva.
   • c. 1611, William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act 1, scene 7:

     should I, damn'd then, / Slaver with lips as common as the stairs / That mount the Capitol

• (emit saliva): drool, slobber

slaver (uncountable)

1. Saliva running from the mouth; drool.
   • 1735 January 13 (Gregorian calendar; indicated as 1734), [Alexander] Pope, An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot, London: […] J[ohn] Wright for Lawton Gilliver […], →OCLC, page 6, lines 101–102:

     Of all mad Creatures, if the Learn'd are right, / It is the Slaver kills, and not the Bite.

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 1]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck.

From slave (“enslave, traffic in slaves”) +‎ -er.

• (UK) enPR: slāʹvə, IPA^(key): /ˈsleɪvə/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (US) enPR: slāʹvər, IPA^(key): /ˈsleɪvɚ/

slaver (plural slavers)

1. A person engaged in the slave trade; a person who buys, sells, or owns slaves.
   • 2013, John Christgau, Incident at the Otterville Station: A Civil War Story of Slavery and Rescue, U of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 25:

     The continued fight between abolitionists and slavers in Missouri caused slave owners to refuge slaves to the Confederate interior. But some Union forces that made salients into rebel territory insisted that the slaves were “contraband”  […]

2. A white slaver, who sells prostitutes into illegal 'sex slavery'.
3. (nautical) A ship used to transport slaves.
   • 1887, Mrs. Dominic D. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 14:

     The Gulnare was a fast sailer, built for a slaver originally[.]

• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “slaver”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967

• Lavers, arvels, larves, lavers, ravels, revals, salver, serval, velars, versal

Via Medieval Latin Sclavus and Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος (Sklábos) from Proto-Slavic *slověninъ. Compare also English Slav and German Slawe. The Medieval Latin word was also used for “slave” (cf. Danish slave).

• IPA^(key): [ˈslæˀʋɐ], [ˈslæwˀɐ]

slaver c

1. Slav

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

• IPA^(key): [ˈslæːʋɐ], [ˈslæːwɐ]

slaver c

1. indefinite plural of slave

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

• IPA^(key): [ˈslæːʋɐ], [ˈslæːwɐ]

slaver

1. present of slave

slaver m pl

1. indefinite masculine plural of slave

slaver

1. indefinite plural of slav

• alvers, levars, slevar, valser, versal