These are two words that, in very different contexts, have disappeared from our everyday language. I remember when I was a kid, between the ages of 1 and 16, people would send me birthday or holiday cards addressed to Master Andrew Boardman. I asked my mom why I was called master and I remember the answer being that “boys were called masters and men were called misters.” What was I a master of, though? For many years, I couldn’t even use the toilet correctly. Nowadays, you don’t call a child Master, although you might call a child Miss — pejoratively.
Likewise, I remember feeling that nice red-around-the-ears-and-throat feeling upon first hearing a techie saying to me, “We’ll just hook up that slave to the other device and it should work fine.” It was a common turn-of-phrase, right? I always wondered how computer folks decided to use this term, but it’s not hard to figure why they don’t any longer.