How to Use enslaver in a Sentence

enslaver

noun
  • To enslavers, the stakes justified a plethora of extreme measures.
    — Time, 5 Sep. 2025
  • Such sentiments echo the way enslavers promoted some of the very same mapping tactics to maintain power.
    — Time, 5 Sep. 2025
  • The law required sheriffs and constables to execute those orders — and enslavers paid them for their efforts.
    — Equal Justice Initiative, USA Today, 6 Nov. 2025
  • In addition, the creation of the fetishes, with their bits of bone, dirt, plants, and other objects, also unnerved enslavers and colonists.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Jan. 2026
  • If the employee turned out to be a fugitive from slavery, the employer was fined 50 cents for each day of employment — paid to the enslaver.
    — Equal Justice Initiative, USA Today, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Many had been enslavers before moving to the Ohio Territory, where slavery was outlawed.
    — Equal Justice Initiative, USA Today, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Left to hire out his time while his enslaver vacationed in Bermuda, Grimes went to the Savannah harbor seeking work.
    — Regina E. Mason, The Atlantic, 7 Mar. 2026
  • Enslaved people could be whipped, branded, mutilated, or killed without legal consequence to their enslavers.
    — Marybeth Gasman, Forbes.com, 27 Aug. 2025
  • Black families were at the mercy of enslavers who routinely sold and separated family members.
    — Equal Justice Initiative, USA Today, 6 Nov. 2025
  • The women’s enslaver then brought together a mob of people, who crossed into Iowa in search of the two women, but didn’t find them, according to Krupa.
    — Molly Morrow, Chicago Tribune, 16 Feb. 2026
  • All the while, enslavers insisted that abolitionists’ agitation on slavery was to blame for the growing national strife.
    — Time, 5 Sep. 2025
  • His family history shows how violence and rape in the era of chattel slavery can be felt over the generations, both for the family of the enslavers and for the enslaved.
    — Ken Makin, Christian Science Monitor, 16 Jan. 2025
  • In the subsequent testimony, Médor claimed that the only way to stop these poisonings was for enslavers to stop promising slaves their estate would free them after their death.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Jan. 2026
  • Trained by his enslaver in bricklaying and carpentry, Moses became foreman of a building crew, erecting barns, homes, and warehouses across the South.
    — Geri Stengel, Forbes.com, 2 Sep. 2025
  • Scott’s case was based largely on his enslaver having taken him to Fort Snelling, which was located in free territory that is now Minnesota.
    — Equal Justice Initiative, USA Today, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Many unfortunate events were blamed on poison—the unexpected death of an enslaver or a slave, a spate of local deaths due to a virus or other disease, or problems on the plantation such as ill livestock or bad harvests.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Jan. 2026
  • Campbell, an enslaver, had left the bench in April, 1861 to help lead the Confederate States of America.
    — Equal Justice Initiative, USA Today, 6 Nov. 2025
  • In one case, in the year before Makandal’s death, a servant in Saint-Domingue named Médor was arrested for poisoning his enslaver to obtain his freedom.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Jan. 2026
  • After discovering enslavers in his lineage, a filmmaker confronts a complicated legacy and meets the descendants of those his ancestors held captive.
    — Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 9 Oct. 2025
  • From the ages of 12 to about 22, Harriet Jacobs lived under the watch of her enslaver, a wealthy physician named James Norcom Sr.
    — Mollie Barnes, The Conversation, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Edgar Allan Poe, adopted son of a Virginian enslaver; Edgar Allan Poe, who managed the sale of a human being owned by his mother-in-law.
    — Literary Hub, 8 Oct. 2025
  • Eliza was eventually turned over to a bounty hunter, who, along with her original enslaver, went to Chicago and captured her, apparently dragging her down Adams Street, Krupa said.
    — Molly Morrow, Chicago Tribune, 16 Feb. 2026
  • Southern enslavers left the national conferences of the Methodist and the Baptist churches in the mid-1840s to protest antislavery sentiment in those bodies.
    — Time, 5 Sep. 2025
  • During the demonstrations for racial justice in 2020, protestors across the country defaced and tore down statues of Washington, arguing that enslavers should be reviled, not honored.
    — John Garrison Marks, Time, 23 Jan. 2026
  • In 1850, enslavers even voided the writ of habeas corpus and its due process protections against unlawful detention by pushing through a national Fugitive Slave Law.
    — Time, 5 Sep. 2025
  • While all colonial enslavers were anxious about the possibility of poisoning plots in general, other, more local, even personal, concerns existed, such as an enslaver’s fear that one of his captives might try to hasten his death by putting something toxic in his food.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Jan. 2026
  • The people in the margins Reading the grievances also illuminates a diverse cast of characters, one different from the 56 white men who signed the declaration, of whom nearly all were wealthy and of whom the majority had been enslavers.
    — Robert Parkinson, The Conversation, 24 June 2026
  • And in my hometown of Philadelphia, over a dozen displays about slavery at Independence National Park — including an exhibit describing George Washington as an enslaver — have been flagged for review.
    — Jonathan Zimmerman, Twin Cities, 21 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'enslaver.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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