Word.ws English Dictionary

human chattel

human chattel noun: human beings considered property, that is, slaves.

Noun

human chattel (uncountable)

  1. Human beings considered property, that is, slaves.
    • Where is the man of intelligence who does not instantly see that this provision of human law […] makes the relation, between father and mother, that of mere agents for increasing the gains of him who claims a right of property in the human chattel, whose offspring, by law, are his?1863, Harper Twelvetrees, preface to The Story of the Life of John Anderson, the Fugitive Slave, William Tweedie (publisher), page ix

Questions about human chattel

What does human chattel mean?
Human chattel means human beings considered property, that is, slaves.
What part of speech is human chattel?
Human chattel is a noun.

Words near human chattel in the dictionary

  1. human cannonball
  2. human cannonballs
  3. human capital
  4. human chain
  5. human chains
  6. human chattel
  7. human cheese
  8. human chorionic gonadotropin
  9. human chorionic somatomammotrophin
  10. human chorionic somatomammotropin
  11. human choriosomatomammotrophin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: human chattel (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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