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SERVICEABLE
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Intended or able to serve a purpose without elaboration
Example:
serviceable low-heeled shoes
Classified under:
Similar:
practical (concerned with actual use or practice)
Derivation:
serviceability; serviceableness (the quality of being able to provide good service)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Ready for service or able to give long service
Example:
heavy serviceable fabrics
Classified under:
Similar:
durable; long-wearing (capable of withstanding wear and tear and decay)
functional; operable; operational; usable; useable (fit or ready for use or service)
Also:
functional (designed for or capable of a particular function or use)
practical (concerned with actual use or practice)
useful; utile (being of use or service)
Antonym:
unserviceable (not ready for service)
Derivation:
serviceability; serviceableness (the quality of being able to provide good service)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Capable of being put to good use
Example:
a serviceable kitchen gadget
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
useful; utile (being of use or service)
Derivation:
serviceableness (the quality of being able to provide good service)
Context examples:
From this document, I learned that Mr. Micawber being again arrested, “Was in a final paroxysm of despair; and that he begged me to send him his knife and pint pot, by bearer, as they might prove serviceable during the brief remainder of his existence, in jail. He also requested, as a last act of friendship, that I would see his family to the Parish Workhouse, and forget that such a Being ever lived.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
They had all the assistance which Isabella could give, by letters of the strongest approbation; and Mrs. Weston was ready, on the first meeting, to consider the subject in the most serviceable light—first, as a settled, and, secondly, as a good one—well aware of the nearly equal importance of the two recommendations to Mr. Woodhouse's mind.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I only meant to observe that it ought not to be lightly engaged in, and that to make it really serviceable to Mrs. Price, and creditable to ourselves, we must secure to the child, or consider ourselves engaged to secure to her hereafter, as circumstances may arise, the provision of a gentlewoman, if no such establishment should offer as you are so sanguine in expecting.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
When I was just preparing to pay my attendance on the emperor of Blefuscu, a considerable person at court (to whom I had been very serviceable, at a time when he lay under the highest displeasure of his imperial majesty) came to my house very privately at night, in a close chair, and, without sending his name, desired admittance.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
But, Mrs. Heep gave him little trouble; for she not only returned with the deed, but with the box in which it was, where we found a banker's book and some other papers that were afterwards serviceable.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Fanny soon learnt how unnecessary had been her fears of a removal; and her spontaneous, untaught felicity on the discovery, conveyed some consolation to Edmund for his disappointment in what he had expected to be so essentially serviceable to her.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
That he had once, by way of experiment, privately removed a heap of these stones from the place where one of his Yahoos had buried it; whereupon the sordid animal, missing his treasure, by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to the place, there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the rest, began to pine away, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor work, till he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole, and hide them as before; which, when his Yahoo had found, he presently recovered his spirits and good humour, but took good care to remove them to a better hiding place, and has ever since been a very serviceable brute.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
