What's the difference between footman and manservant?
Footman
Definition:
(n.) A soldier who marches and fights on foot; a foot soldier.
(n.) A man in waiting; a male servant whose duties are to attend the door, the carriage, the table, etc.
(n.) Formerly, a servant who ran in front of his master's carriage; a runner.
(n.) A metallic stand with four feet, for keeping anything warm before a fire.
(n.) A moth of the family Lithosidae; -- so called from its livery-like colors.
Example Sentences:
(1) To butcher TS Eliot: I have seen the mercury of my thermometer flicker, And I have seen the eternal footman hold my sheets drenched in sweat at 3am, and snicker, And in short, I was too hot.
(2) My own strong reaction to the novel stemmed from Austen's depiction of society, a world of conspicuous consumption (Sir Walter Elliot cannot stand the idea of retrenching when he mismanages his finances and prefers to leave his house rather than be seen with a footman or a picture less) and his arrogant, good-looking daughter Elizabeth can't be seen without all the props, either.
(3) His father appeared in a non-speaking role as a footman in Doctor Who.
(4) Two years ago the Queen took out an injunction against the Daily Mirror to prevent further disclosures by its reporter Ryan Parry, who spent several weeks employed at Buckingham Palace as a footman.
(5) Never was he happier than when distracting himself with the sort of quirky odds and ends that a more rigorous mind would have dismissed as insignificant, such as the people who "strengthen a sickly child's back" by rubbing it with snails, or the footman who considered enlisting in the army but "knew I should be rejected because I was getting bald".
Manservant
Definition:
(n.) A male servant.
Example Sentences:
(1) Paul Bettany plays unfortunately named manservant Jock Strapp, the Jeeves to Mortdecai's Wooster.
(2) The Duke of Brunswick nursed a grudge for nearly 17 years before ordering his manservant to buy a back copy of the offending newspaper and was allowed to sue over that later publication; the multiple publication rule has been the bane of web publishers for more than a decade.
(3) History’s first overtly gay Disney character, it turns out, is LeFou, unctuous manservant to preening, hyper-macho villain Gaston – an underling who, in Condon’s words, “on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston”.
(4) Always keenly aware that his manservant was more cerebrally endowed than himself, Bertie also fretted that his quotient of the grey stuff would not be sufficient to dabble in publishing (until he figured out that a cheque book could be used to hire Substantia grisea from elsewhere).
(5) After he died, Glenconner’s family were surprised to discover that he had left his shares in Beau Estates to his manservant, Winston Kent Adonai, and fought the will.
(6) I've come up with a splendid idea about a series of stories about a gentleman and his manservant.
(7) A pioneer of the parenting technique of "negative reinforcement", Malory was absent for most of the key events of Archer's childhood, leaving his upbringing to his decrepit manservant Woodhouse, whose loyalty Archer repays with abuse (sample quote: "I'll rub sand into your dead little eyes… I'll also need you to go buy sand").