Note 1296 — Chapter XV
Reading edition
By a sort of grim irony the word has come to mean "slave" in the West, owing to the multitudes of Slavs captured and enslaved during the medieval border warfare. But the term is by many referred to the root slovo, word, speech, implying a people of intelligible utterance, and this is supported by the form Slovene occurring in Nestor and still borne by a southern Slav group. See T. Peisker, "The Expansion of the Slavs," Camb. Med. Hist. Vol. II. 1913, p. 421 n. 2.