The pro athlete, and his once-servile relationship to owners and league management, had changed, too.

FORBES: Broadway Joe Was A Blogger

The movie is exactly what you would expect: spirited, efficient, glazed with effects, and almost servile in its fidelity to the novel.

NEWYORKER: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Only a few, the old ones, covered their insolence with glacial politeness, while the younger ones became either servile or friendly to the point of taking liberties, thinking thereby to win her favor.

NEWYORKER: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

He tried to help them in any way he could, offering to render the sorts of little services one might expect from a secretary or a valet rather than a colleague, for which he was reproached by a writer of his own generation, who called him obsequious and servile.

NEWYORKER: ?lvaro Rousselot��s Journey