subservience

1. 1.

   the condition of being something that is useful in reaching an end or carrying out a plan

   “all his actions were in subservience to the general plan”

   Broadercondition
2. 2.

   in a subservient state

   Synonymssubservientness

   Broadersubordinateness
3. 3.

   abject or cringing submissiveness

   Synonymsobsequiousnessservility

   Broadersubmissiveness

   Narrowersycophancy

Other forms of subservience

plural

subserviences·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about subservience

What does subservience mean?

subservience means "the condition of being something that is useful in reaching an end or carrying out a plan". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in subservience?

subservience has 4 syllables: sub-ser-vi-ence. The stress falls on "ser". In IPA it is /səbˈsɝviəns/.

What is another word for subservience?

Close synonyms include subservientness, obsequiousness, servility. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is subservience a common word?

subservience is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.