Synonyms of enslavement

enslavement

noun

as in slavery

the state of being an enslaved person

having known the misery of enslavement first hand, Frederick Douglass went on devote his life to the cause of making others free

Synonyms & Similar Words

• slavery
• servitude
• bondage
• yoke
• servility
• thralldom
• thrall
• subjugation
• captivity
• serfdom
• peonage
• subjection
• imprisonment
• dependence
• incarceration
• enchainment

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• freedom
• liberty
• liberation
• emancipation
• independence
• manumission
• sovereignty
• autonomy
• enfranchisement
• self-government

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of enslavement

The king’s Caribbean visit is an occasion to recognize the full story of Britain’s trafficking and enslavement of millions of Africans across the Atlantic – and the Crown’s direct culpability. — Brooke N. Newman, The Conversation, 29 Oct. 2026

The former Atlanta mayor and onetime White House advisor to Democratic President Biden is trying to do it in a Deep South state where her lineage extends back to antebellum enslavement. — Bill Barrow, Los Angeles Times, 28 Oct. 2026

The former Atlanta mayor and onetime White House adviser to Democratic President Joe Biden is trying to do it in a Deep South state where her lineage extends back to antebellum enslavement. — ABC News, 28 Oct. 2026

He was born into enslavement in Edgefield District, South Carolina, bound by laws that forbade Black literacy. — Tessa Solomon, ARTnews.com, 21 Oct. 2026

Anyone arguing otherwise either believes in human enslavement, has no grasp of history, or suffers from both afflictions. — Literary Hub, 19 Oct. 2026

How did the zombie go from being an emblem of enslavement and loss of autonomy in Haitian Vodou to the favorite flesh-eating grotesquerie of postapocalyptic tales? — Angelica Jade Bastién, Vulture, 8 Oct. 2026

Earling gives a voice to the young girl Sacajewea, creating a shattering first-person account of her enslavement, her grief, and her endurance, re-centering her in a brutal history. — The Week Us, TheWeek, 28 Sep. 2026

Probably not his community of freedmen, anxious to escape the stigma of an enslavement that had ended less than ten years prior. — Julian Lucas, New Yorker, 21 Sep. 2026