Slaveholding

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The institution or practice of owning slaves. uncountable

    "The slaveholding way of life continued until 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed following the end of the Civil War between the Northern and the Southern states"

  2. 2
    the practice of owning slaves wordnet
  3. 3
    An owning of one or more slaves. countable

    "On the other hand, the Mountain South also contained some Lower South counties, thereby permitting internal comparisons between differently sized slaveholdings, between crop specializations, and between agricultural and nonagricultural producers."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Having possession/ownership of one or more slaves. not-comparable
Adjective
  1. 1
    allowing slavery wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
slaveryslaveryunfree

Example

More examples

"They brought slaves and slaveholding traditions with them, and cultivated hemp and tobacco."

Etymology

From slave + holding.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.