How to Use servile in a Sentence

servile

adjective
  • The others at the table nodded their heads in servile agreement.
    Keith McNally, Harpers Magazine, 5 Jan. 2021
  • By the end of the last season the hosts had become conscious of their servile condition and taken over.
    Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 26 June 2018
  • The point is made: Pinocchio might have a hole where his heart should be, but is the unthinking servile person any less hollow?
    Michael Cavna, Washington Post, 8 Dec. 2022
  • To these critics, many of whom are of Indian descent, Apu is a servile stereotype.
    Dave Itzkoff, New York Times, 25 Feb. 2020
  • Julie Andrews played Cinderella—neat as a new pin and not remotely servile.
    Carol Dyhouse, Time, 19 Apr. 2021
  • Even the most servile propaganda puppets in the right-wing media can’t figure out a way to credibly defend that.
    David Zurawik, baltimoresun.com, 19 June 2018
  • For India’s mostly servile media, this is a striking break from the usual after seven years of Modi.
    Debasish Roy Chowdhury, Time, 3 May 2021
  • In some ways small dogs can be thought of as cats with a more servile attitude; terriers originated as ratters.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 24 Feb. 2010
  • Social media was scoured for posts offensive to the president, and the judiciary was rendered servile to him.
    Suzy Hansen, The New Republic, 24 Apr. 2018
  • His looming, hooded lab assistant Chopsley was his silent and servile foil.
    Doug MacCash | Staff Writer, NOLA.com, 27 Aug. 2020
  • As a result of this sort of culture, the stereotype of dancers as servile bodies that are better seen than heard unfortunately calcified long ago.
    Sydney Skybetter, Wired, 7 Feb. 2021
  • Nicholas Hoult plays the servile title character, but it’s the Count himself, played by Nicolas Cage as the most horrible of all horrible bosses, who is sure to steal - or at least take a very big bite out of - the spotlight.
    Michael O'Sullivan, Anchorage Daily News, 9 Feb. 2023
  • Nicholas Hoult plays the servile title character, but it’s the Count himself, played by Nicolas Cage as the most horrible of all horrible bosses, who is sure to steal — or at least take a very big bite out of — the spotlight.
    Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post, 6 Feb. 2023
  • Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.
    latimes.com, 24 Oct. 2017
  • If China’s leaders are as wise as its propagandists are servile, the Middle Kingdom’s future is secure.
    Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 8 Nov. 2021
  • The language Shakespeare uses to describe the angry, servile Caliban alludes to slavery, which the directors have excised from their production.
    Peter Marks, Washington Post, 26 Jan. 2023
  • Early Blackamoor figures, made from expensive ebony and silver, were almost always shown in servile positions—as as the base of a table, or supporting a candelabra, or even acting as a seat.
    Emma Bazilian, House Beautiful, 28 Aug. 2020
  • Even LifeNews, a usually servile, pro-Kremlin tabloid site, has admitted this new reality.
    Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2017
  • Instead, Biden has adopted a servile attitude toward the Taliban, never criticizing them, let alone as harshly as he’s rebuked the Afghan military.
    The Editors, National Review, 25 Aug. 2021
  • Only in the early 3rd century did the emperors transform the Senate into a nakedly servile body which no longer even maintained the exterior semblance of independence.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 30 Apr. 2011
  • Blame this on Cicero, the ancient Roman orator, who championed the arts quae libero sunt dignae (cerebral studies suited for freemen), as opposed to the practical, servile arts suited for lower-class tradespeople.
    George Anders, The Atlantic, 1 Aug. 2017
  • These conditions led them to become stereotyped as industrious and servile, which affected how employers treated them.
    NBC News, 4 Oct. 2021
  • Yet, as the technology gap with the West narrows, China's desire for self-reliance rises, and once-servile entrepreneurs have become increasingly outspoken in their critique of China's economic system.
    Sonja Opper For Cnn Business Perspectives, CNN, 8 Nov. 2021
  • The spark was Georgian Dream’s increasingly servile relationship toward Russia.
    Amos Barshad, Wired, 27 Aug. 2020
  • The only substantive issue is Arrington’s claim that Sanford has been insufficiently servile towards the president.
    Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, 12 June 2018
  • Satya is servile and deceptive; Rebecca, candid and egalitarian.
    Sam Sacks, WSJ, 26 July 2018
  • In Ukrainka’s play, Oksana’s husband is servile, obligingly performing Ukrainian songs and dances for the czar’s entertainment, while the artist in Zabuzhko’s novel is wracked by an inferiority complex familiar to citizens of dominated nations.
    Uilleam Blacker, The Atlantic, 10 Mar. 2022
  • Montesquieu characterized Islamic states as dominated by tyrants and religiously servile.
    Jacob Soll, The New Republic, 12 Apr. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'servile.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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