slave trade

noun

: trafficking of enslaved people
especially, in U.S. history : the business or practice of capturing, transporting, selling, and buying enslaved African people for profit prior to the American Civil War

Examples of slave trade in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
This is an intellectual grace that anyone who understands the colonial ties to Christianity an its uses to justify horrors like the Transatlantic slave trade and colonization could find challenging to reconcile. Byron Armstrong, Forbes.com, 28 Aug. 2025 And so knowing that these pleasurable activities were used to basically link slave markets in Africa to slave ships lined off the coast, and that how, this pleasure also produced such misery for the people who endured the transatlantic slave trade. Outside Online, 27 Aug. 2025 The National Museum of African American History and Culture, which the Smithsonian opened in 2016, has comprehensive exhibits on the history of slavery in the United States beginning with the transatlantic slave trade. Joey Garrison, USA Today, 20 Aug. 2025 According to the New York Botanical Garden, okra originated from the African region around Ethiopia, and the plant arrived in the South in the early 1700s with the slave trade. Anne Byrn, Southern Living, 19 Aug. 2025 See All Example Sentences for slave trade

Word History

First Known Use

1701, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of slave trade was in 1701

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Cite this Entry

“Slave trade.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave%20trade. Accessed 10 Sep. 2025.

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