Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or character of being subservient, in any sense.
  • noun Specifically, obsequiousness; truckling.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state of being subservient; subservience.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • A maiming subserviency is so conditional to their very existence that it becomes an aim in itself, an ideal.

    Prisons and Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences 1914

  • First, What the Father has as Creator is delivered over to the Son, to be used and disposed of in subserviency to his great undertaking.

    Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume V (Matthew to John) 1721

  • The endowments of the mind -- reason, wit, learning, must be used in subserviency to religion; the enjoyments of the world -- estate, credit, interest, power, preferment, must be improved for the honour of Christ.

    Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume V (Matthew to John) 1721

  • But that which completes the comfort of this is that he is the head over all things to the church; he is entrusted with all power, that is, that he may dispose of all the affairs of the providential kingdom in subserviency to the designs of his grace concerning his church.

    Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation) 1721

  • The great duty of children is to obey their parents (v. 1), parents being the instruments of their being, God and nature having given them an authority to command, in subserviency to God; and, if children will be obedient to their pious parents, they will be in a fair way to be pious as they are.

    Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation) 1721

  • Though this mammon of unrighteousness is not to be trusted to for a happiness, yet it may and must be made use of in subserviency to our pursuit of that which is our happiness.

    Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume V (Matthew to John) 1721

  • The fact is that his temper was so amiable and conciliatory, his conduct so rational, never urging impossibilities, or even things unreasonably inconvenient to them, in short so moderate and attentive to their difficulties, as well as our own, that what his enemies called subserviency I saw was only that reasonable disposition which, sensible that advantages are not all to be on one side, yielding what is just and liberal, is the more certain of obtaining liberality and justice.

    Benjamin Franklin 1888

  • Many of the men sprang forward, officiously, to offer their services, either from the hope of the reward, or from that cringing subserviency which is one of the most baleful effects of slavery.

    Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1853

  • Many of the men sprang forward, officiously, to offer their services, either from the hope of the reward, or from that cringing subserviency which is one of the most baleful effects of slavery.

    Uncle Tom's cabin, or Life among the lowly 1852

  • In 1856, the American Party opposed "the reckless and unwise policy of the present administration" and "a truckling subserviency" to "foreigners."

    Martin Nolan: Arizona for Arizonans, Now! 2010

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