Word.ws English Dictionary

non serviam

non serviam noun: a formal refusal to serve.

Noun

non serviam (uncountable)

  1. A formal refusal to serve.
    • Two months later he issued his notorious non serviam, “A Soldier's Declaration.” He expected to be court-martialed for this, but his friend Robert Graves managed to arrange that he face a medical board instead.1975, Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, OUP, published 2013, page 99
    • In her memoirs, she wrote that she heard him speak, but his words floated away from her; it was as if her brain, already choked by the day's horrors, had issued a non serviam and refused to absorb any more.2013, Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper's Wife

Origin of non serviam

From Latin non serviam (“I will not serve”), used in the Vulgate to translate Hebrew לֹא אעבוד.

Questions about non serviam

What does non serviam mean?
Non serviam means a formal refusal to serve.
What part of speech is non serviam?
Non serviam is a noun.

Words near non serviam in the dictionary

  1. non sequitous
  2. non sequitur
  3. non sequituri
  4. non sequiturs
  5. non sequuntur
  6. non serviam
  7. non state actor
  8. non troppo
  9. non-
  10. non-24
  11. non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: non serviam (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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