subservient
adjective
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How Should You Use subservient?
Since sub- means "below", it emphasizes the lower position of the person in the subservient one. Soldiers of a given rank are always subservient to those of a higher rank; this subservience is symbolized by the requirement that they salute their superior at every opportunity. Women have often been forced into subservient relationships with men. A small nation may feel subservient to its more powerful neighbor, obliged to obey even when it doesn't want to. So subservience usually brings with it a good dose of resentment.
Examples of subservient in a Sentence
Eugene Linden, Time, 6 Sept. 1999
That's why many believe that I have the right to preach but not to pastor. For a woman to be a pastor would mean that men would have to submit and be subservient to a woman.
—Chryll Crews, Ms., January/February 1998
As for a "European Europe," allied with but not subservient to the United States, providing for its own defense and diplomacy and practicing detente with Moscow, de Gaulle did not achieve it in his lifetime, but there was at least a beginning.
—Stanley Hoffmann, New York Times Book Review, 20 Mar. 1983
She refused to take a subservient role in their marriage.
Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 30 Sep. 2024
And the subservient leadership training that the program went through over the summer — a three-day, approximately five-hour course that Jeremiah, who has been at the school for 21 years, insisted his coaches and players take — proved crucial amid this fall’s adversity.
—Kyle Newman, The Denver Post, 4 Oct. 2024
There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief—almost a joke—that the actual year was nowhere near the threat of a subservient dictatorship.
—Spin Staff, SPIN, 30 Sep. 2024
Alongside online schools, international efforts are ramping up to educate teenage girls and women, who are all but confined to their homes by a regime that sees them as a subservient underclass.
—Hilary Whiteman, CNN, 15 Aug. 2024
See all Example Sentences for subservient 
Dictionary Entries Near subservient
Cite this Entry
“Subservient.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subservient. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
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subservient
adjective
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