Word.ws English Dictionary

time-serving

time-serving noun: opportunism.

Noun

time-serving (uncountable)

  1. Opportunism.
  2. The functionality of a timeserver.

Adjective

time-serving (comparative more time-serving, superlative most time-serving)

  1. Opportunistic; conforming to the status quo in order to serve one's own interests.
    • And the man who had just been engaged in the most time-serving neglect of former, and a most cringing anticipation of new patrons, became forthwith the kind and hospitable host of strangers who had no claim upon him beyond their own isolated situation.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 85
    • Harding brought with him a timeserving pal from The Times called Keith Blackmore, who was equally a stranger to broadcasting.2016 November, Jonathan Meades, “Inside Job”, in Literary Review

Forms of time-serving

Noun
alternative formtimeserving
Adjective
comparativemore time-serving
superlativemost time-serving

Words formed from time-serving

Questions about time-serving

What does time-serving mean?
Time-serving means opportunism.
What part of speech is time-serving?
Time-serving can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near time-serving in the dictionary

  1. time-series animation
  2. time-series animations
  3. time-served
  4. time-server
  5. time-servers
  6. time-serving
  7. time-servingness
  8. time-share
  9. time-shared
  10. time-sharer
  11. time-sharers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: time-serving (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: “time-serving.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/time-serving. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.