SERVICEABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does serviceable mean? 

• SERVICEABLE (adjective)
  The adjective SERVICEABLE has 3 senses:

1. ready for service or able to give long service

2. capable of being put to good use

3. intended or able to serve a purpose without elaboration

  Familiarity information: SERVICEABLE used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SERVICEABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Ready for service or able to give long service

Context example:

heavy serviceable fabrics

Similar:

durable; long-wearing (capable of withstanding wear and tear and decay)

functional; operable; operational; usable; useable (fit or ready for use or service)

Also:

functional (designed for or capable of a particular function or use)

practical (concerned with actual use or practice)

useful; utile (being of use or service)

Antonym:

unserviceable (not ready for service)

Derivation:

serviceability; serviceableness (the quality of being able to provide good service)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Capable of being put to good use

Context example:

a serviceable kitchen gadget

Similar:

useful; utile (being of use or service)

Derivation:

serviceableness (the quality of being able to provide good service)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Intended or able to serve a purpose without elaboration

Context example:

serviceable low-heeled shoes

Similar:

practical (concerned with actual use or practice)

Derivation:

serviceability; serviceableness (the quality of being able to provide good service)

 Context examples 

All the other furniture is plain and serviceable, you perceive.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Mrs. Gardiner and the children were to remain in Hertfordshire a few days longer, as the former thought her presence might be serviceable to her nieces.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

“Yet it is not amiss for a monk-bred man. I trust that you are lowly and serviceable?”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I am poor and an exile, but it will afford me true pleasure to be in any way serviceable to a human creature.’

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It had been serviceable in deadening the first shock, without retaining any influence to alarm.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

So that, supposing us to have the gift of reason, he could not see how it were possible to cure that natural antipathy, which every creature discovered against us; nor consequently how we could tame and render them serviceable.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He had lain like a Trojan behind his mattress in the gallery; he had followed every order silently, doggedly, and well; he was the oldest of our party by a score of years; and now, sullen, old, serviceable servant, it was he that was to die.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

That they were false, the general had learnt from the very person who had suggested them, from Thorpe himself, whom he had chanced to meet again in town, and who, under the influence of exactly opposite feelings, irritated by Catherine's refusal, and yet more by the failure of a very recent endeavour to accomplish a reconciliation between Morland and Isabella, convinced that they were separated forever, and spurning a friendship which could be no longer serviceable, hastened to contradict all that he had said before to the advantage of the Morlands—confessed himself to have been totally mistaken in his opinion of their circumstances and character, misled by the rhodomontade of his friend to believe his father a man of substance and credit, whereas the transactions of the two or three last weeks proved him to be neither; for after coming eagerly forward on the first overture of a marriage between the families, with the most liberal proposals, he had, on being brought to the point by the shrewdness of the relator, been constrained to acknowledge himself incapable of giving the young people even a decent support.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Each had a yew or hazel stave slung over his shoulder, plain and serviceable with the older men, but gaudily painted and carved at either end with the others.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)