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
  • That this was news was hard to believe, since complaints about servile female voices had been made not for years but for decades.
    — Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 30 Sep. 2024
  • 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
  • So Alex dons a uniform, buses tables and engages in servile labor for the first time in her life.
    — Kimberly Roots, TVLine, 23 Mar. 2025
  • 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
  • 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
  • His looming, hooded lab assistant Chopsley was his silent and servile foil.
    — Doug MacCash | Staff Writer, NOLA.com, 27 Aug. 2020
  • Unfortunately, Trump takes servile flattery as his due.
    — Robert Kagan, The Atlantic, 19 June 2026
  • 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
  • His servile defense secretary has threatened to deploy the military in other cities.
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 13 June 2025
  • Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.
    — latimes.com, 24 Oct. 2017
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • That this man’s-man tough guy becomes utterly servile in the presence of a bunch of slack-casual bazillionaires is the cherry on top of the fascist sundae.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 13 Mar. 2026
  • Will Dagger, too, as a farmhand who feels too deeply for people who rarely acknowledge his presence, makes a memorable virtue of the character’s servile role.
    — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 14 July 2023
  • These conditions led them to become stereotyped as industrious and servile, which affected how employers treated them.
    — NBC News, 4 Oct. 2021
  • 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
  • These officials could, in turn, redistribute some of their private goods among their own servile lieutenants, but the monarch retained ultimate power to grant or revoke their privileged status.
    — Serhiy Kudelia, Foreign Affairs, 27 Feb. 2014
  • Even LifeNews, a usually servile, pro-Kremlin tabloid site, has admitted this new reality.
    — Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2017
  • Some Hawaiian cultural experts say aloha is a complex and fluid idea, too often misconstrued as a sweet and servile way of tolerating visitors.
    — Jenny Jarvie, Los Angeles Times, 19 Oct. 2023
  • 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
  • Satya is servile and deceptive; Rebecca, candid and egalitarian.
    — Sam Sacks, WSJ, 26 July 2018
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Montesquieu characterized Islamic states as dominated by tyrants and religiously servile.
    — Jacob Soll, The New Republic, 12 Apr. 2018
  • The mother took him in, pitying his orphan status and appreciating his straightforward manners, neither servile nor presumptuous, but respectful and unembarrassed and warm.
    — Daniyal Mueenuddin, New Yorker, 23 Nov. 2025

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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