Service

How to spell service

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce service

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does service mean?

1. nounThe action or business of helping or doing useful work for customers or the public.
2. verbTo perform routine maintenance or repair on a vehicle or machine.
3. nounA formal act of religious worship held at set times.

Service in a sentence

• noun

  The hotel is known for its friendly customer service.

• verb

  The garage will service the car before the long road trip.

• noun

  The family attended the morning service at the local church.

• noun

  The broadband service went down for three hours this morning.

• verb

  A technician comes once a year to service the boiler.

• noun

  The Sunday service at the chapel included two hymns.

Where does service come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin servitium, meaning 'slavery' or 'the condition of being a servant', which was built on servus, the ordinary Latin word for a slave or bond servant. English took it in through Old French servise during the 1100s, when its earliest meanings were strongly religious and feudal: the duty owed to God in worship and the duty owed by a vassal to a lord. Over the centuries the sense softened and broadened from forced obligation into the much friendlier idea of doing useful work for others, giving us modern shades like customer service, public service, and the maintenance of a machine. The very same servus root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'servant', 'serve', and 'servile', which is a handy reminder that the word keeps its single 'r' and its tidy -vice ending. That -vice spelling, pronounced as a weak '-iss', is the small trap, since it tempts writers toward '-vise' or '-vace'.

How the word is built

• serv- (from Latin servus: slave, or servire: to serve)
• -ice (noun suffix forming abstract nouns)