slaver1
/ˈsleɪvə
/noun historical
1A person who dealt in or owned slaves.The sword wielding African slavers that the Europeans dealt with usually kept the women and children to add to their own tribe numbers....
- I already told you, I don't deal with slavers.
- The winner took away with him as many of the losing tribe as he could manage, and those he could not use were sold to slavers.
1.1A ship used for transporting slaves.The slave trade within Africa involved very high costs for guarding slaves, transporting them, and feeding them until the slavers from Europe turned up at the port....
- Considering Cornado's brand of hospitality, any ship in his service was probable no better than a slaver.
- The Trouvadore was a Spanish slaver wrecked near Middle Caicos in 1841.
Rhymes
slaver2
/ˈslavə/ /ˈsleɪvə /noun [mass noun]
1Saliva running from the mouth: slaver ran down from a corner of his mouth...
- Then he lied motionlessly with slaver flowing out of his mouth.
- Scholarly and distinguished-looking, he made a most unexpected slaver.
- It was believed that serpents, coiling together in a wriggling, writhing mass, generated these glass or paste beads from their slaver and shot them into the air from their hissing jaws.
2 archaic Excessive or obsequious flattery.
verb [no object]
1Let saliva run from the mouth: the Labrador was slavering at the mouth...
- Within a manner of half seconds, the wall exploded, and out from among the debris leapt a huge creature with slavering tusked jaws and mean yellow eyes.
- It was ordered into a frontal attack as part of a botched tank offensive. As dawn broke, survivors staggered back, ‘haggard, bloodshot-eyed, slavering and rolling their bare-teethed heads’.
- It hadn't been in the script that I would have a man's life in my hands or, worse, that he would be slavering into my fingers.
Synonyms
drool, slobber, dribble, salivate;
Scottish & Irish slabber
archaic drivel
1.1Show excessive admiration or desire: suburbanites slavering over drop-dead models...
- I don't even know why I'm bothering to post this; it's hardly a secret to anyone that media organizations are slavering over the prospect of war.
- While there are those who slaver to bathe in the esteem of others, there are many who do not - especially those who have been taught that all praise and glory and blessing and honor belong to the Lamb of God alone.
- Hell, they slaver over the prospect of a kid falling down a well, or a local dog getting braces.
Origin
Middle English: probably from Low German; compare with slobber.