SERVILE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does servile mean? 

• SERVILE (adjective)
  The adjective SERVILE has 2 senses:

1. submissive or fawning in attitude or behavior

2. relating to or involving slaves or appropriate for slaves or servants

  Familiarity information: SERVILE used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SERVILE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Submissive or fawning in attitude or behavior

Context example:

servile tasks such as floor scrubbing and barn work

Similar:

bootlicking; fawning; sycophantic; toadyish (attempting to win favor by flattery)

obsequious (attentive in an ingratiating or servile manner)

slavish; submissive; subservient (abjectly submissive; characteristic of a slave or servant)

slavelike (suitable for a slave or servant)

Antonym:

unservile (not servile or submissive)

Derivation:

servility (abject or cringing submissiveness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Relating to or involving slaves or appropriate for slaves or servants

Context example:

servile work

Similar:

unfree (held in servitude)

 Context examples 

What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He is usually respectful to the attendant and at times servile; but to-night, the man tells me, he was quite haughty.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Servile and fawning as he had been before, he was now as domineering and bellicose.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The reader may remember, that when I signed those articles upon which I recovered my liberty, there were some which I disliked, upon account of their being too servile; neither could anything but an extreme necessity have forced me to submit.

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

At the end of the victorious campaign the surviving ape-folk were driven across the plateau (their wailings were horrible) and established in the neighborhood of the Indian caves, where they would, from now onwards, be a servile race under the eyes of their masters.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

To compose a letter which might at once do justice to her sentiments and her situation, convey gratitude without servile regret, be guarded without coldness, and honest without resentment—a letter which Eleanor might not be pained by the perusal of—and, above all, which she might not blush herself, if Henry should chance to see, was an undertaking to frighten away all her powers of performance; and, after long thought and much perplexity, to be very brief was all that she could determine on with any confidence of safety.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

The effort succeeded; for an instant he unconsciously relapsed into his old servile manner, bent low before me, and actually fawned upon me as he replied:—"I don't want any souls, indeed, indeed! I don't. I couldn't use them if I had them; they would be no manner of use to me. I couldn't eat them or—"

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

But it is impossible to express his noble resentment at our savage treatment of the Houyhnhnm race; particularly after I had explained the manner and use of castrating horses among us, to hinder them from propagating their kind, and to render them more servile.

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