subserve
Americanverb (used with object)
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subserves,
present (3rd person singular)
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subserved,
past participle, past
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subserving
present participle
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to be useful or instrumental in promoting (a purpose, action, etc.).
Light exercise subserves digestion.
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Obsolete. to serve as a subordinate.
verb
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to be helpful or useful to
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obsolete to be subordinate to
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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subservesimple
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subservessimple
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have subservedperfect
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has subservedperfect
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am subservingprogressive
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are subservingprogressive
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is subservingprogressive
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have been subservingperfect progressive
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has been subservingperfect progressive
Past
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subservedsimple
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had subservedperfect
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was subservingprogressive
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were subservingprogressive
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had been subservingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of subserve
1610–20; < Latin subservīre, equivalent to sub- sub- + servīre to serve
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
These auditory and reward network pathways likely subserve the mind’s ability to form predictions and expectations during music listening.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 18, 2021
Resting-state fMRI has shown that brain networks that subserve motor and even cognitive functions like language, memory and emotion are continuously and dynamically active in the resting brain.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 7, 2017
In a paper published in The Lancet in February 1916, he posited a “physical or chemical change and a break in the links of the chain of neurons which subserve a particular function.”
From New York Times ● Jun. 10, 2016
In The Trial, setting and camera steadily subserve the subject.
From Time Magazine Archive
Of this turn in the outlook, the philosophic affirmation of life and the consent of the will to subserve the business of living are the salutary concomitants.
From Prophets of Dissent : Essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy by Otto Heller
If translated to humans, these findings have important implications for understanding how the hippocampus subserves various cognitive functions that rely on it, such as episodic memory, navigation and imagination.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 3, 2013
It simply subserves, extends, illuminates and liberates Shakespeare's poem.
From Time Magazine Archive
It may be laid down as a general rule that the policy which best subserves the interests of the patrons of a road is always the best policy for its owners.
From The Railroad Question A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and remedies for their abuses by William Larrabee
It subserves the progress of the human race.
From Pastor Pastorum by Rev. Henry Latham
It is no longer a restless agent, without definite aim; it has a large field of exertion assigned to it, and it subserves those social interests which it would naturally trouble.
From The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin by John Henry Newman
But they would subserve, they have subserved, the interests of a true national development.
From The Middle Period 1817-1858 by John William Burgess
These battles he read of every morning subserved no end: the cause stood motionless; only so many blue-coated machines rendered useless: but behind the machines—what?
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 68, June, 1863 by Various
In brief, unless some special purpose is subserved thereby, an audience should not long be left in the dark as to the form in which the dramatist thinks he has cast his play.
From Dramatic Technique by George Pierce Baker
It would be very easy to think that the gilds could not have fulfilled all these duties and subserved all these needs.
From Education: How Old The New by James J. Walsh
WELFARE, public, subserved by passage of Freedmen's Bureau Bill, 149.
From History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States by William Horatio Barnes
Considering the hugging behavior and similar part of the gene, the authors say there’s evidence that “the neural mechanisms subserving social behaviors exist in O. bimaculoides.”
From Washington Post ● Sep. 20, 2018
Unscientific introspection 319:3 Science depicts disease as error, as matter versus Mind, and error reversed as subserving the facts of health.
From Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
"The elements of the inorganic world are subserving the purposes of organic life."
From The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 by Aaron Walker
Practically the author of the dual government, he believed emphatically in subserving the lesser to the greater, although endowing the States with sufficient power for self-protection.
From The Conqueror by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
So, doubtless, when beneath thy potence swerving, 'Tis that thou lead'st us by a path unknown, Our seeming deviations all subserving The perfect orbit round the central throne.
From An Anthology of Australian Verse by Bertram Stevens
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