Esclavo
/esˈkla.βo/noun
A slave; a person legally owned by another and forced to work.
Did you know?In medieval Latin, *sclavus* shifted from meaning “Slav” to meaning “slave” because so many Slavic people were captured and sold in Europe, making this one of the darkest semantic shifts in language history.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Slavic
PSl
slovnin
“A Slavic person”
Medieval Latin
Latin
sclavus
“Originally a Slav; later, a slave”
Old French
Old French
esclave
“Slave”
Middle Spanish
Spanish
esclavo
“Slave”
Modern English
English
slave
“A person forced to work for another”