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servility

UK/səˈvɪ.lɪ.ti/US/sɚˈvɪ.lɪ.ti/
nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — serve sits at #918neutral

Servility is excessive willingness to obey and please. Sickening servility.

It is always contemptuous, and it accuses somebody of giving up their own judgement. Servility differs from politeness in that it expects something in return.

Definitions of servility

  1. 1nounservilityExcessive willingness to obey and please.C2

    “The servility of the whole department was embarrassing to watch.”

servility is a quality.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ser- (guard)

  2. Latin

    servīlis

  3. Old French

    servil

  4. Middle English

    servyle

  5. English

    servile

  6. English, today

    servility

Built from

  • servus · Latin — slave

From servile + -ity. servile comes from Middle English servyle, from Old French servil, servile, from Latin servīlis, from servus (“slave”). by surface analysis, serve + -ile.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

servility in the wild

  • In this way, notions of darkness and servility fused: to be visibly darker and from a loosely organized border group increasingly implied a status fit for bondage.

    Shanqella

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the servil family

servile

servility — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

  • serve
  • server
  • servant
  • servitude