All 16 Uses
servile
in
Democracy In America, Volume 1
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- It grew attached to them when they were clement and just, and it submitted without resistance or servility to their exactions, as to the inevitable visitations of the arm of God.†
Chpt Intr.servility = submissiveness -- often an attitude of someone who is so submissive or eager to serve and please that they seem to lack self-respect
- But men of high and generous characters are now to be met with, whose opinions are at variance with their inclinations, and who praise that servility which they have themselves never known.†
Chpt Intr.
- The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate subjection, and the meanest and most servile minds preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principles are the apostles of civilization and of intelligence.†
Chpt Intr.
- This state of mind displays itself in their manners and language; they are at once insolent and servile.†
Chpt 1 *
- *o [Footnote o: At this time Alexander Hamilton, who was one of the principal founders of the Constitution, ventured to express the following sentiments in "The Federalist," No.71:— "There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the Executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the Legislature, as its best recommendation.†
Chpt 8
- The man who in given cases consents to obey his fellows with servility, and who submits his activity and even his opinions to their control, can have no claim to rank as a free citizen.†
Chpt 12servility = submissiveness -- often an attitude of someone who is so submissive or eager to serve and please that they seem to lack self-respect
- It is the idea of right which enabled men to define anarchy and tyranny; and which taught them to remain independent without arrogance, as well as to obey without servility.†
Chpt 14
- This may be explained by analogy; despotism debases the oppressed much more than the oppressor: in absolute monarchies the king has often great virtues, but the courtiers are invariably servile.†
Chpt 15
- For my part, I am persuaded that in all governments, whatever their nature may be, servility will cower to force, and adulation will cling to power.†
Chpt 15servility = submissiveness -- often an attitude of someone who is so submissive or eager to serve and please that they seem to lack self-respect
- But at the present day, when all ranks are more and more confounded, when the individual disappears in the throng, and is easily lost in the midst of a common obscurity, when the honor of monarchy has almost lost its empire without being succeeded by public virtue, and when nothing can enable man to rise above himself, who shall say at what point the exigencies of power and the servility of weakness will stop?†
Chpt 17
- Violence made him a slave, and the habit of servitude gives him the thoughts and desires of a slave; he admires his tyrants more than he hates them, and finds his joy and his pride in the servile imitation of those who oppress him: his understanding is degraded to the level of his soul.†
Chpt 18
- The servility of the one dooms him to slavery, the pride of the other to death.†
Chpt 18servility = submissiveness -- often an attitude of someone who is so submissive or eager to serve and please that they seem to lack self-respect
- The negress was seated on the ground before her mistress, watching her smallest desires, and apparently divided between strong affection for the child and servile fear; whilst the savage displayed, in the midst of her tenderness, an air of freedom and of pride which was almost ferocious.†
Chpt 18
- He contrasts the independence which he possessed amongst his equals with the servile position which he occupies in civilized society.†
Chpt 18
- Hitherto, wherever the whites have been the most powerful, they have maintained the blacks in a subordinate or a servile position; wherever the negroes have been strongest they have destroyed the whites; such has been the only retribution which has ever taken place between the two races.†
Chpt 18
- In the theatres, gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters; in the hospitals they lie apart; and although they are allowed to invoke the same Divinity as the whites, it must be at a different altar, and in their own churches, with their own clergy.†
Chpt 18
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) You might want to remember this as sounding similar to servant. Both words come from the Latin word for slave (servus).