servility

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“
He borrows from his station a condescension in everything to his superiors, yet unattended by that mean servility which is called good behaviour in such persons.

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Definitions (4)

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  1. The state or character of being servile. Especially — The condition of a slave or bondman; slavery. To be a queen in bondage is more vile Than is a slave in base servility. Shak., 1 Hen. VI., v. 3. 113. Servility with freedom to contend. Milton, P. L., vi. 169.
  2. Mean submission; baseness; slavishness; obsequiousness; slavish deference. This unhappy servility to custom. Government of the Tongue. Loyalty died away into serrility. Macaulay, Hallam's Const. Hist. The servility and heart-burnings of repining poverty. Irving, Knickerbocker, p. 161. A desire to conform to middle-class prejudices may produce quite as real a servility as the patronage of aristocracies or of courts. Lecky, Eng. in 18th Cent., iii.

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Examples (50)

  • If we look, however, without prejudice on the world, we shall find that men whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the compliances of servility are apt enough in their association with superiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact that attention which they refuse to pay. —  Lives of the Poets
  • While reducing his finances to order and newspaper editors to servility, the conqueror received news of the triumph of his arms in Southern Italy. —  The Life of Napoleon I (Volume 2 of 2)
  • The negro never dreams that he is degraded by this servility, and consequently he does not feel its oppression. —  The Memories of Fifty Years
  • To further insure our servility, the Japanese divided us into groups of ten “blood brothers.” If one attempted to escape, the other nine would be severely punished. —  Blood Brothers
  • If there is a word in the English language that means treachery, servility, and cowardice, it is that word 'conservative.' —  History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States
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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from French servilité = Spanish servilidad = Portuguese servilidade = Italian servilità; from Latin as if *servilita (t-)s, from servilis, servile: see servile.
 

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