subservience

American  

[suhb-sur-vee-uhns] / səbˈsɜr vi əns /

Sometimes subserviency

noun

1. the fact of serving in a subordinate position or role.

   There is no hierarchy, no dominance or subservience of any member, in this vision of the faith community.

2. a servile or excessively submissive quality or manner.

   Was I so weak that a child could reduce me to this fawning subservience—without will, without character?

3. the fact or quality of being useful, or the state of being used, to promote a certain purpose or end.

   Popular nationalists decried Irish subservience to British commercial interests, and promised to strengthen economic sovereignty.

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Etymology

Origin of subservience

First recorded in 1645–55; subservi(ent) ( def. ) + -ence ( def. )

Explanation

Something that serves a purpose for someone or something else demonstrates subservience. Something that's a means to an end has subservience, like a character whose introduction has subservience to the book's plot. You can also use the word subservience to describe submissive or servile behavior, like the subservience of an obedient dog who always fetches your slippers. The word originally meant simply "usefulness," and it came from the Latin root word subservientem, "assist, or lend support."

Example Sentences

It helped undo the damage done by the subservience in “I Dream of Jeannie.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 2, 2025

More and more women have been given a choice about how many children they will bear and that has opened up avenues to different lives, less confined to motherhood and economic subservience to men.

From Seattle Times • Jun. 5, 2024

Feminists have spent the past 150 years painstakingly chipping away at the laws that forced our subservience.

From Slate • Apr. 17, 2024

The prevalence of interracial marriage, plus the rare spectacle of white subservience and Indigenous largesse, is the kind of inversion of the social statuo quo that clearly fascinates Scorsese.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 19, 2023

I could not make subservience an automatic part of my behavior.

From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright

Related Words

• acquiescence
• conformity
• deference
• orderliness
• reverence