All 3 Uses of
servile
in
The Magic Mountain
- Because she is a power, and it is servile to accept her, to reconcile oneself to her—that is, to reconcile oneself to her inwardly.†
Chpt 5.5 *
- They watched as a rousing tale of love and murder in the court of an Oriental potentate unrolled silently before them; scene after opulent scene sped past, full of naked bodies, despotic lust, and abject servility blind in its zeal, full of cruelty, prurience, and fatal desire—and then suddenly the film slowed to linger revealingly on the muscular arm of an executioner.†
Chpt 5.8servility = submissiveness -- often an attitude of someone who is so submissive or eager to serve and please that they seem to lack self-respect
- Knowing that the slightest frown was sufficient to terrify and cow the pitiful, sensitive fellow, he tolerated Wehsal's servile habit of seizing every opportunity to bow and scrape, sometimes allowed him to carry his overcoat on their promenades—and Wehsal would bear it over one arm with a kind of reverence—and even put up with the Mannheimer's conversation, and very gloomy conversation it was.†
Chpt 6.5
Definitions:
-
(1)
(servile) too eager to serve or obey others -- often in a way that seems overly submissive, weak, or lacking self-respect
or:
related to low-status tasks -
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
You might want to remember this as sounding similar to servant. Both words come from the Latin word for slave (servus).