(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.
Sycophantic
Definition:
(a.) Alt. of Sycophantical
Example Sentences:
(1) Around the world millions would relish seeing their unaccountable, insulated leaders exposed to something harsher than a sycophantic press conference.
(2) In a Telegraph blog, published this evening, the former Tory cabinet minister deploys his trademark bluntness to warn that it is "imperative for the Tories is to establish that Mr Clegg is a pro-immigration sycophantic Europhile with no policy whatsoever, beyond defence cuts, to reduce the crippling burden of the national debt".
(3) People may heap sycophantic praise on you now, but "the poet remembers", poeta pamieta.
(4) As most establishment media figures do when quivering in the presence of national security state officials, the supremely sycophantic TV host Bob Schieffer treated Hayden like a visiting dignitary in his living room and avoided a single hard question.
(5) 20 years ago this prize would have been sycophantic but maybe more justified.
(6) Yeah … so he comes in and we’re all standing there [gesturing sycophantic applause] and he’s: ‘I’ve got you where I want you.’ Has it been hard work being Roy Keane ?
(7) And in only a handful of scenes he brought to ripe, repugnant life a sycophantic functionary in the Coen brothers' caper The Big Lebowski (1998).
(8) Twenty years ago this prize would have been sycophantic but maybe more justified.
(9) A lazily sycophantic Tory commentariat will usually swallow most of what their leaders say, regardless of what they do.
(10) So he comes in and we’re all standing there [gesturing sycophantic applause] and he’s: ‘I’ve got you where I want you.’” The former United captain also reflected on how Ferguson had withdrawn his loan players from Preston North End after his son, Darren, had been sacked as their manager – and how Stoke City, then managed by Pulis, had followed suit.
(11) I was banned from the party for standing as an independent candidate in the last general election, so I observe impartially – believing party politics to be a stagnating system, a weirdo hobby whose significance is talked up by sycophantic media.
(12) Legend has it that during a sycophantic Q&A session, the young Deng broke ranks and put a critical question to one of the most successful businessmen in the world: "Why is your business strategy in China so bad?"
(13) Members of Allende's presidential staff would remember the pre-coup Pinochet as a bluff and somewhat sycophantic officer - "the guy we would call if we needed a jeep," said one.
(14) Certainly he enjoys more influence than any other Egyptian and has a large, sycophantic following .
(15) It describes a Muslim fraternity within the governing party and an "iron ring of sycophantic but contemptuous advisers".
(16) Her love for Charles, and his for her, has a purity and nobility that has shone through the 35 years I have been writing sycophantic books and articles about the royal family.
(17) "Bill [Nicholson, the Tottenham manager] had sent our trainer Cecil Poynton over to haul us out of the pub," remembered Jimmy Greaves of his first Spurs Christmas party, possibly to a background of feeble, sycophantic laughter from Ian St John.
(18) Anyone who is actually "anti-politics" is indeed political, but sees this establishment as sycophantic, self-serving and only able to clone itself.
(19) Further comment on how he finds it should have been added parenthetically (and rather sycophantically), and not in the context of added emphasis to his regional peculiarity” – Brett Crowley.
(20) Willie Rennie, the Scottish party leader, said: "The blatant sycophantic behaviour laid out for all to see should make the first minister squirm.