inservient

inservient

English

Etymology

From Latin inserviens, present participle of inservire.

Adjective

inservient (comparative more inservient, superlative most inservient)

1. (obsolete) Conducive; instrumental.
   • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, London: Edw. Dod & Nath. Ekins, 1650, Book I, Chapter 1, p. 2,

     […] although their intellectuals had not failed in the theory of truth, yet did the inservient and brutall faculties control the suggestion of reason […]

   • 1656, Walter Charleton (translator), Epicurus’s Morals: Collected, And faithfully Englished, London: P. Davies, 1926, Chapter 8, p. 28,

     […] if the discourse be touching Happiness it self, why should not Happiness or Pleasure be a greater Good than Virtue, since it is the End, to the attainment whereof Virtue is but inservient?

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for inservient in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913)

Anagrams

• interveins

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Latin

Verb

īnservient

1. third-person plural future active indicative of īnserviō