What's the difference between servile and subservient?

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.

Subservient


Definition:

  • (a.) Fitted or disposed to subserve; useful in an inferior capacity; serving to promote some end; subordinate; hence, servile, truckling.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The classic Jedi response to subservience can be seen in the contrast between Luke’s first meeting with C-3PO – “I see, Sir”; “You can call me Luke”; “I see, Sir Luke,”; “No, just Luke” – and Qui-Gon Jinn meeting Jar Jar Binks: “Mesa your humble servant”; “That won’t be necessary”.
  • (2) It was concluded that meal-associated rhythms are associated with an endogenous oscillator distinct from the SCN and that it may not entirely subservient to the SCN-based oscillator in intact rats.
  • (3) With just three days in which to form a government that could fill the power vacuum that has emerged in Athens, Tsipras said he would begin by approaching other leftwing forces in an attempt to "end the agreements of subservience".
  • (4) The supreme leader wants a subservient and disciplined sidekick but he also needs a president to solve some very delicate problems.
  • (5) Everything else is subservient to that.” Rather grandly, he says he will have nothing to do with either of them.
  • (6) Choe also accused the European Union and Japan, the resolution’s co-sponsors, of “subservience and sycophancy” to the United States, and he promised “unpredictable and serious consequences” if the resolution went forward.
  • (7) It may be entirely unsurprising in Whitehall that our subservience has been institutionalised in this way, but everyone else is entitled to ask whether that makes it healthy or right.
  • (8) While it is fashionable to charge Mugabe with destroying Zimbabwe in its prime, little regard is given to the fact that the average African country has been granted nominal political independence amid economic subservience.
  • (9) There was a particular teacher who was bent on casting people of colour in very subservient roles.
  • (10) Race, gender, and socioeconomic status place poor women of color in triple jeopardy for subservience.
  • (11) It was evidence of the establishment’s “extraordinary subservience” to foreign royals, he added.
  • (12) During the first week or two of his leadership he will be faced with the allegation – promoted by cynical Tory newspapers and garrulous Labour ancients – that he wants to take Labour back to the days of wholesale public ownership and subservience to the trade unions.
  • (13) In 50 years, will a paper be uncovered detailing a shady scheme to keep British subjects subservient with cakes and vintage-style pluck?
  • (14) Ahmed Wali Karzai , who was gunned down in his home in Kandahar by a bodyguard, was in many ways the personification of modern-day Afghanistan – corrupt, treacherous, lawless, paradoxical, subservient and charming.
  • (15) Evidence is discussed to show that so-called L- and P-type dyslexia result from deviations in the development of hemispheric subservience in learning to read.
  • (16) Bluntly, one race is cast in a supporting and therefore subservient role to the other, and this is oppressive in a way that all the representation in the world couldn’t address.
  • (17) A strike, even if it was supported by only a small number of junior doctors, would – somewhat paradoxically – run the risk of helping the government in its determination to replace an independent medical profession with a subservient workforce of doctors who are only motivated by financial self-interest, and managed by economically efficient managers.
  • (18) Health programs can also change the attitudes of men toward women, including attitudes that are detrimental to women's health such as the belief that women are weak and that good women are quiet, subservient, and bear many children.
  • (19) "There are many different factions here, and all are cooperating now but we fear that they [Isis] will impose there control, and they start treating everyone as subservient to them," he said.
  • (20) She flamboyantly overcame the patriarchal restrictions of Arab society where women are traditionally subservient to their husbands, by taking an equal fighting role with men, by getting divorced and remarried, having children in her late 30s, and rejecting vanity by having her face reconstructed for her cause.