1. A person who is forced to work for another person for no payment and who is regarded as the property of the person he or she works for: At one time, there were more slaves than free citizens in ancient Athens.
2. Someone who is completely dominated by another person or something: Brian admits that he is a slave to alcohol, but he can't stop it.
3. A person who meekly accepts being ruled by someone else: The husband, the poor slave, was continually taking orders from his wife to do all the work around the house and to spend his money to take her on trips, even when he didn't want to do any of those things.
4. Someone who works or has to work very hard, often in bad conditions and for low pay: Trudy has been a slave in her job and so she should have left the company a long time ago.
5. Etymology: originally a reference to Slavs. This sense of development resulted because of the wars waged by Otto the Great and his successors against the Slavs, a great number of whom were taken captive and sold into servitude.

The name Slav has the literal meaning of "speaker" and they are members of any of the people of Eastern Europe and North Western Asia that speak one of the Slavonic languages; such as, those who speak Bulgarian, Russian, and Polish.

The term apparently appeared in the 14th century via medieval Latin Sclavus from medieval Greek Sklabos, an alteration of Old Slavic Sloveninu.