Etymology From Middle English slaveren, from Old Norse slafra (“to slaver”), probably imitative. Doublet of slabber.
1
To drool saliva from the mouth; to slobber.
2
To fawn.
3
Of saliva To be drooled out of someone’s mouth.
A fearsome sight it was to behold how he swelled in his wrath, and his eyes blazed like disastrous stars at midnight, and being wood with anger he gnashed his teeth till the froth stood at his lips and slavered down his chin.1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 27:
4
To smear with saliva issuing from the mouth.
5
To be besmeared with saliva.
should I, damn'd then, / Slaver with lips as common as the stairs / That mount the Capitolc. 1611, William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act 1, scene 7:
Etymology From Middle English slaveren, from Old Norse slafra (“to slaver”), probably imitative. Doublet of slabber.
1
Saliva running from the mouth; drool.
Of all mad Creatures, if the Learn'd are right, / It is the Slaver kills, and not the Bite.1735 January 13 (Gregorian calendar; indicated as 1734), [Alexander] Pope, An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot, London: […] J[ohn] Wright for Lawton Gilliver […], →OCLC, page 6, lines 101–102:
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck.1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 1]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:
Etymology From slave (“enslave, traffic in slaves”) + -er.
1
A person engaged in the slave trade; a person who buys, sells, transports, or owns slaves.
The continued fight between abolitionists and slavers in Missouri caused slave owners to refuge slaves to the Confederate interior. But some Union forces that made salients into rebel territory insisted that the slaves were “contraband” […]2013, John Christgau, Incident at the Otterville Station: A Civil War Story of Slavery and Rescue, U of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 25:
2
A white slaver; a person who sells prostitutes into sexual slavery.
The Gulnare was a fast sailer, built for a slaver originally[.]1887, Mrs. Dominic D. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 14:
Somewhat unsurprisingly, unleashing the most powerful navy on the planet with carte blanche to exterminate slavers on sight saw a dramatic and sudden collapse in slaver numbers in the late 1840s and early 1850s.2018 December 1, Drachinifel, 10:12 from the start, in Anti-Slavery Patrols - The West Africa Squadron, archived from the original on 29 Nov 2024: