Word.ws English Dictionary

menial

/ˈmiːni.əl/

menial adjective: of or relating to work normally performed by a servant.

Adjective

menial (comparative more menial, superlative most menial)

  1. Of or relating to work normally performed by a servant.
    • She hung round him, watching his every look as if she grudged the veriest menial offices from the servants; and she almost scolded him for not eating, when he had done justice enough to the good things set before him to have satisfied even the cook herself.1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Arrived at Home”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 85
    • She was not proposing to go out again, so he got her slippers and took off her boots. It delighted him to perform menial offices.1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter LXX, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC
  2. Of or relating to unskilled work.
    • menial job
    • Father Brown took the paper without a word, and obediently went to look for the coat; it was not the first menial work he had done in his life.1910 October 1, G[ilbert] K[eith] Chesterton, “The Queer Feet”, in The Innocence of Father Brown, London; New York, N.Y.: Cassell and Company, published 1911, →OCLC
  3. Servile; low; mean.
    • a menial wretch

Noun

menial (plural menials)

  1. A servant, especially a domestic servant.
    • “Nay, Dame Mary,” answered the Knight, “it is enough you desire such an attendant.—Yet I have never loved to nurse such useless menials—a lady's page—it may well suit the proud English dames to have a slender youth to bear their trains from bower to hall, fan them when they slumber, and touch the...1820, [Walter Scott], chapter 3, in The Abbot. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John...
    • But the young man was conscious, at the same moment, that it had ceased to be a matter of serious regret to him that the little American flirt should be “talked about” by low-minded menials.1879, Henry James, Daisy Miller, London: Harper & Brothers
  2. A person who has a subservient nature.

menial meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam

menial in Urdu

ادنیٰ, خانگی, نیچا, ذلیل, گھریلو نوکر, خدمت گار

menial in Bengali

menial; servile
নিত্যি nityi

menial in Telugu

menial
ఊడిగపు ūḍigapu

menial in Malayalam

humble, unskilled, lowly
പാദസേവാപരമായ, വിടുപണിയായ, ഹീനജോലിയായ, അവിദഗ്ദ്ധമായ, താഴ്ന്ന, വിലകെട്ട
minion, servant, drudge
വീട്ടുവേലക്കാരൻ, വേലക്കാരൻ, കർമ്മഭൃത്ത്, പരിചാരകൻ, സേവകൻ, സിൽബന്തി
More languagesFewer languages
menial in Kannada
ಗುಲಾಮಚಾಕರಿಯ, ಕೀಳುಕೆಲಸದ, ದಾಸ್ಯವೃತ್ತಿಯ, ಮನೆಗೆಲಸದ
menial in Arabic
وَضِيع waḍīʕ

Examples of menial in a sentence

  • For instance, controlling for the above-mentioned variables, migrants to Tangerang or Samarinda (rather than Medan) have a significantly greater chance of getting a craft (as opposed to menial) job.2011, Chris Manning, Sudarno Sumarto, Employment, Living Standards and Poverty in Contemporary Indonesia, →ISBN:
  • He told me that princes, jeds, and even jeddaks of the outer world, were among the menials who served the yellow race; […]1913 December – 1914 March, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Warlord of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published...
  • The world was awake to the 2nd of May, but Mayfair is not the world, and even the menials of Mayfair lie long abed.1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./4/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:

All 12 example sentences with menial

Forms of menial

Adjective
comparativemore menial
superlativemost menial
Noun
pluralmenials

Origin of menial

From Middle English meyneal, from Anglo-Norman mesnal, from maisnee (“household”), from Vulgar Latin *mānsiōnāta, from Latin mānsiō (“house”).

Words formed from menial

Questions about menial

What does menial mean?
Menial means of or relating to work normally performed by a servant.
What is menial in Urdu?
Menial in Urdu is ادنیٰ, خانگی, نیچا. See Menial meaning in Urdu.
How do you use menial in a sentence?
For instance, controlling for the above-mentioned variables, migrants to Tangerang or Samarinda (rather than Medan) have a significantly greater chance of getting a craft (as opposed to menial) job.
What part of speech is menial?
Menial can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce menial?
Menial is pronounced /ˈmiːni.əl/.

Words near menial in the dictionary

  1. menhaden
  2. menhadens
  3. Menheniot
  4. menhir
  5. menhirs
  6. menial
  7. menialism
  8. menialities
  9. meniality
  10. menialize
  11. menialized

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: menial (page history and authors); menial (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); নিত্যি (Bengali) (page history and authors); ఊడిగపు (Telugu) (page history and authors); menial (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); menial (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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