1. a term used by enslaved people to address their white male owner or overseer
Usage: historical; offensive

Examples

• The historical documents contained references to enslaved people calling their owner ‘massa’.
• In the novel, the character used the term ‘massa’ when speaking to the plantation owner.
• The word ‘massa’ appears in many slave narratives from the antebellum period.
• Historians study the use of terms like ‘massa’ to understand power dynamics in slavery.
• The dialect pronunciation ‘massa’ for ‘master’ was common in historical accounts.