CHATTEL Synonyms: 55 Similar and Opposite Words

chattel

noun

ˈcha-tᵊl

Definition of chattel

as in slave

a person who is considered the property of another person an amendment to end the keeping of humans as chattel

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in possession

chattels plural transportable items that one owns packed up all her chattels and moved to a new state

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

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.

Recent Examples of chattel Before meeting Rael-Gálvez, Daria Celeste Landress had learned while researching her family history that three Indigenous ancestors had been listed in historical documents as chattel, alongside furniture, houses, and trees. — Geraldo Cadava, New Yorker, 26 Feb. 2026 Patriarchal cultures reduce women to economic dependence, treating them as a form of chattel to be traded among families. — Literary Hub, 6 Nov. 2025 There was no forgetting the notorious Confederate prison camps like Andersonville and Salisbury, the Confederate pogrom at Fort Pillow, and the fact that the South had seceded in the first place to perpetuate and expand an elite-serving economy based on human chattel. — Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 5 Oct. 2025 Only a racist would dare to defend or dismiss slavery, which stripped Africans of human rights and enslaved them as chattel to pick cotton on Southern plantations. — Reader Commentary, Baltimore Sun, 21 Aug. 2025 See All Example Sentences for chattel

Recent Examples of Synonyms for chattel

Noun

There were a lot of stories about the richer people that went away amid all the political problems, and the people working for them, the descendants of the slaves.

— Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 13 Aug. 2026
Very few think that America was truly founded when the first slaves arrived in 1619 and that patriotic holidays are oppressive.

— David Weigel, semafor.com, 12 Aug. 2026

Definition of slave

Noun

The City of Atlanta and Fulton County’s Board of Commissioners have been trading negotiations over the sale of the Atlanta City Detention Center, and things have started to get ugly.

— AJ Willingham, AJC.com, 12 Aug. 2026
The month of August offers some respite, a chance to reflect and reset before September kicks things into gear once more.

— Sophie Lou Wilson, Vogue, 12 Aug. 2026

Definition of things

Noun

The friction is when this starts taking place in smaller resorts, luxury trains, yachts, and where the clientele is specifically paying super high prices to avoid this stuff.

— Doug Gollan, Forbes.com, 11 Aug. 2026
This is stuff that these guys have been saying on the record very explicitly for decades.

— Tonya Mosley, NPR, 10 Aug. 2026