subserve

Verb

subserve (third-person singular simple present subserves, present participle subserving, simple past and past participle subserved)

1. To be subservient to.
   • Ah, if only he had asked her to subserve him, to be his slave!1921, DH Lawrence, Women in Love, Vintage, published 2008, page 288
2. To serve to promote (an end); to be useful to.
   • Calculating by spherical trigonometry, and assuming the same obliquity, I obtain 3 dundas and 40 pulas for the ascensional arc, giving a difference in time of 3 pulas, or about one of our minutes; an error so small, that even were the Indian astronomer aware of its existence he would disregard it...1839 October, J.J. Middleton, “Description of an Astronomical Instrument presented by Raja Ram Sing, of Khota, to the Government of India”, in Journal of the Asiatic Society, volume 8, number 94...
   • Their principles will cease to be dear to them, whenever they shall cease to subserve the purposes of good order.1840, Abel Upshur, A Brief Enquiry into the Nature and Character of our Federal Government, Campbell, page 69
3. To assist in carrying out.
   • 'Tis a greater credit to know the ways of captivating Nature, and making her subserve our purposes, than to have learnt all the intrigues of policy.1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica: Or, Confest Ignorance, the Way to Science; […], London: […] E. C[otes] for Henry Eversden […], →OCLC
   • The unlearned capacities that underpin language acquisition constitute a uniquely human complex of non-linguistic dispositions and mechanisms that also subserve other cognitive functions.2011 September 21, Barbara C. Scholz, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Geoffrey K. Pullum, Ryan Nefdt, “Philosophy of Linguistics”, in Edward N. Zalta, Uri Nodelman, editors, Stanford Encyclopedia of...