Word.ws English Dictionary

disserve

disserve verb: to treat poorly; to do a disservice to.

Verb

disserve (third-person singular simple present disserves, present participle disserving, simple past and past participle disserved)

  1. To treat poorly; to do a disservice to
    • They are an excellent group of journalists, and over the last five years the executives manhandling their newspaper have disserved them at every turn.1988 August 12, Michael Miner, “Cop and Writer; Manhandling the Sun-Times”, in Chicago Reader

Forms of disserve

third-person singular presentdisserves
present participledisserving
past participledisserved
pastdisserved

Origin of disserve

From Old French desservir, from Latin dis- (“indicating negation”) + servīre (“to serve”).

Questions about disserve

What does disserve mean?
Disserve means to treat poorly; to do a disservice to.
What part of speech is disserve?
Disserve is a verb.
What is the past tense of disserve?
The past tense of disserve is disserved.

Words near disserve in the dictionary

  1. disserted
  2. Disserth
  3. Disserth and Trecoed
  4. disserting
  5. disserts
  6. disserve
  7. disserved
  8. disserves
  9. disservice
  10. disserviceable
  11. disserviceably

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: disserve (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “disserve.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/disserve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.