What's the difference between menial and servile?

Menial


Definition:

  • (n.) Belonging to a retinue or train of servants; performing servile office; serving.
  • (n.) Pertaining to servants, esp. domestic servants; servile; low; mean.
  • (n.) A domestic servant or retainer, esp. one of humble rank; one employed in low or servile offices.
  • (n.) A person of a servile character or disposition.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Women seldom occupy higher positions in a [criminal] organisation, and are rather used for menial, but often dangerous tasks ,” it notes.
  • (2) One of the biggest losers are the estimated 12-20 million illegal immigrants living in the US, most of whom play an integral role in the economy, doing menial jobs that citizens do not want.
  • (3) Having failed to get into Rada, Wesker embarked on a series of menial jobs: bookseller's assistant, plumber's mate and, at the Bell hotel in Norwich, kitchen porter.
  • (4) The new movie marks a partial return to the thematic territory of Rosetta , which concerned a teenage girl scrabbling around for menial jobs.
  • (5) In the UK, the interrelated challenges we face include an ageing population; technological advances that wipe out whole occupations; global competition and the large-scale underemployment of individuals, mostly women, overqualified for the menial jobs they have struggled to acquire.
  • (6) Nonetheless, the workers' movement was once dedicated to the eventual abolition of all menial, tedious, grinding work.
  • (7) The system applies domain-specific knowledge to manage the menial details and automate most of the decision-making steps involved in the design process.
  • (8) • On placement, put your ego to one side and take on any task, however menial: it will open the door to new experiences.
  • (9) If they are poor, it wants them to be invisible, flitting uncomplainingly from one menial job to the next.
  • (10) The prosecution claimed that the man, who left home when he was 11 to take up a series of menial jobs in Delhi, was the most violent of the attackers of the girl last December.
  • (11) Like ads for other menial jobs, they use absurd and insulting hyperbole in inverse proportion to the quality of the position, as though seeing the word SUPERSTAR enough times will make you forget how boring the duties are.
  • (12) If that became true over the past 10 years, it was only in the "we are all middle class now" sense of New Labour – not in the sense of actually eliminating menial work, or the divide between workers and owners.
  • (13) There is also Hunt's plan to make all student nurses spend a year of their training doing the more menial tasks in healthcare usually done by healthcare assistants – feeding, washing and moving patients, for example.
  • (14) We suggest that prosperity which has led to use of foreign laborers in menial jobs has caused this slow down.
  • (15) The Home Office says the menial work is provided on a voluntary basis to meet their “recreational and intellectual” needs and provide “relief from boredom”.
  • (16) It’s about spotting that and thinking about how you can influence it.” That’s the dream Clara Summers (not her real name), 33, clings to as she contemplates quitting her job in events at a Copenhagen bar, where a “bro-centric” atmosphere means that, as the only woman in the management team, she is handed all the menial tasks.
  • (17) Menial tasks in South Africa are invariably performed by Africans.
  • (18) Professional politicians, and their intellectual menials, will no doubt blather on about “Islamic fundamentalism”, the “western alliance” and “full-spectrum response”.
  • (19) 15.5% were not in school and unemployed, and 28% worked at menial jobs.
  • (20) Smartphones at the ready: TechCrunch has given Alfred , an outsourcing app for your most menial tasks, its Disrupt Cup – an award that recognises the best new start-ups.

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.