What's the difference between abject and servile?

Abject


Definition:

  • (a.) Cast down; low-lying.
  • (a.) Sunk to a law condition; down in spirit or hope; degraded; servile; groveling; despicable; as, abject posture, fortune, thoughts.
  • (a.) To cast off or down; hence, to abase; to degrade; to lower; to debase.
  • (n.) A person in the lowest and most despicable condition; a castaway.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He is an expert on the public health problems that plague El Paso and the other cities along the international border, all of which are exacerbated by abject poverty and a burgeoning population.
  • (2) During his long stint in the witness stand, Harris was questioned at length about why he expressed abject remorse to the father for his actions, offering a little more credible explanation than he felt ending the relationship had upset the woman.
  • (3) And while Altmejd presents sexual scenes of cartoonish horror and disgust, Lucas's art has embraced lavatorial humour, abjection, self-denigration, the pithy sculptural one-liner and the obscene gesture.
  • (4) An Israeli commentator said of the first of them: "when one looks through all the lofty phraseology, all the deliberate disinformation, the hundreds of pettifogging sections, sub-sections, appendices and protocols, one clearly recognises that the Israeli victory was absolute and Palestine defeat abject."
  • (5) It is an abject failure to take the rights of females seriously.
  • (6) Obviously Pantilimon is more abject than Hart,” says Graham Lees “and Demichelis must have lied on his CV but why does no one bemoan the wretchedness, sorry, opportunity gifted to Sunderland, of Nasri’s selection?
  • (7) Indeed, we have been reminded recently of the abject poverty that many have fallen into, needing to use food banks or choose between "eating and heating" and the need for charitable institutions to step forward and help the needy.
  • (8) Now, millions of working people who would otherwise be languishing in abject poverty depend on these tax credits.
  • (9) It was an abject defeat for a leader whose response to the migration crisis deserved better.
  • (10) Meanwhile the victims are sitting there in abject poverty and have not received any compensation."
  • (11) The aim was to secure a politically and militarily allied government in a strategically important country, a mission which David Cameron amusingly declared this week to have been "accomplished" despite the western alliance's abject failure over 12 years to defeat that Taliban's rag-tag army and the refusal of the corrupt Hamid Karzai administration to play ball over the country's long-term future .
  • (12) But it bears testament, too, to the Brown government's abject failure to give a comprehensible account of itself that the opposition should find such easy pickings.
  • (13) It's all there: sexual and social confusion, vulnerability and violence, alienation and loneliness, the oscillation between feeling abject and worthless and wanting to take over the world, the fantasies of power and revenge.
  • (14) "Outright hostility, abject surrender - that's what you have seen in the past.
  • (15) The picture you have painted is one of abject squalor made worse by a generally lazy approach to hygiene.
  • (16) Smith could not have been more abjectly humiliated.
  • (17) Given the abject failure of much of the western media to scrutinise its actions – at least until it's too late – it may believe it can get away with it.
  • (18) He ended up with five during the Euro 2016 qualifying campaign but all came in the fixtures against an abject Gibraltar, featuring a hat-trick in the home game scored, memorably, from a combined total of eight yards.
  • (19) Mick Cash, RMT general secretary, said: “The abject failure by Southern rail in yesterday’s talks to take the safety issues seriously has left us with no option but to confirm further action.
  • (20) Recent weeks have seen a succession of good news stories from Iraq, including the ceremonial reopening of the national museum, whose looting in 2003 symbolised the abject failure to plan for the post-war period.

Servile


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to a servant or slave; befitting a servant or a slave; proceeding from dependence; hence, meanly submissive; slavish; mean; cringing; fawning; as, servile flattery; servile fear; servile obedience.
  • (a.) Held in subjection; dependent; enslaved.
  • (a.) Not belonging to the original root; as, a servile letter.
  • (a.) Not itself sounded, but serving to lengthen the preceeding vowel, as e in tune.
  • (n.) An element which forms no part of the original root; -- opposed to radical.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In its intransigence over Kashmir, the Indian state has, among other things, waged a narrative war, in which it tells itself and its citizens via servile media, that there is no dispute, that it’s an internal matter – and whatever troubles there are in the idyllic valley are the work of jihadis from Pakistan.
  • (2) In any case, the Brits are a notoriously lily-livered shower when it comes to workplace politics, too craven to strike – [note to non-British readers: we're a sorry servile bunch, we don't like it up us] - and as a result, poor John's failed coup has led to him becoming the most reviled union leader in British history, ahead of the excellent Bob Crow, the much misunderstood Arthur Scargill, and Gary Neville.
  • (3) She is still reliant on a fairy godmother ( Helena Bonham Carter ) to help wrest her from this servile purgatory, and her life ambitions still seem to include marrying a prince and wearing a very nice dress.
  • (4) Until this happened, the entire outside world thought of Tunisia as a downmarket tourist destination, with a servile attitude towards the west.
  • (5) Turnbull is likely to forge ahead with Abbott’s two-track convention process and a curated referendum council, to which mob are already saying they will not be servile.
  • (6) "Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded into servility.
  • (7) All patients had variable dysphagia of variable servility with or without aspiration.
  • (8) "The new servile class," is how Danny Dorling, author of So You Think You Know About Britain, refers to them and he says they've grown out of all proportion in the past 25 years.
  • (9) Craxi broke a long tradition of servility towards the US by facing down President Ronald Reagan over the hijack of the Achille Lauro cruise liner.
  • (10) Their servile acceptance of the European austerity diktat sounded their death knell.
  • (11) There are stereotypes of Asian women as servile, as passive, as fulfilling some kind of service role.
  • (12) No high growth indices or boasting about being an economic "powerhouse" can cover up the scandal of a servile adherence to colonial bigotry.
  • (13) She comes to save the corrupt, disgraced and servile political system," said Alexis Tsipras, who leads the opposition Syriza alliance.
  • (14) In Gujarat, journalists in Ahmedabad say, simple intimidation has reduced the press corps to cowed servility.
  • (15) On parallel narrative tracks, we follow Cecil as he serves a succession of presidents, glad that his job, however servile, has offered him an escape from the Georgia cotton fields where he grew up in the 1920s, witnessing his mother's rape and his father being shot for protesting.
  • (16) This seems a bit of a stretch from "seeing his nakedness", but we know the Bible has a quaint way with sexual deeds: lying with each other, knowing each other – and why would Ham's offspring be condemned to servility for an innocent incident?
  • (17) This caring for others out of love is not about being servile,” he said.
  • (18) The men bow with a touch of servility; the women follow.
  • (19) In the second case, a latency-age girl's coy and servile mannerisms endeared her to adults and served as a reaction formation to her own need to be nurtured.
  • (20) People close to the former president are dismayed by what they see as a servile, one-way relationship, in which Ghani concedes too much without getting anything in return.