noun
definition
An act of putting the ball or shuttlecock in play in various games.
example
Whose serve is it?
definition
A portion of food or drink, a serving.
verb
definition
(personal) To provide a service (or, by extension, a product, especially food or drink).
definition
To treat (someone) in a given manner.
definition
To be suitor to; to be the lover of.
definition
To be effective.
definition
To deliver a document.
definition
To lead off with the first delivery over the net in tennis, volleyball, ping pong, badminton etc.
definition
To copulate with (of male animals); to cover.
definition
To be in military service.
definition
To work, to operate (a weapon).
definition
To work through (a given period of time in prison, a sentence).
definition
To wind spun yarn etc. tightly around (a rope or cable, etc.) so as to protect it from chafing or from the weather.
definition
To perform (a public obligation).
example
I've received a summons for jury duty. It says I serve one day or one trial.
definition
To provide crack cocaine (to), usually by selling, dealing, or distributing.
Examples of serve in a Sentence
I serve my own purpose.
We all serve the same cause of protecting those weaker than us from evil.
We serve a different master.
Daniela had told her the kitchens would serve at any time of day.
We're just out here enjoying the weather before they serve supper.
There have been nine deities to serve in this position.
Shall I serve them up?
It will serve no purpose to get us both killed on the way up there.
She cannot serve you today, ikira.
There's a saying, better to serve in Hell than get your head split open somewhere else.
Basically, serve her or die.
Not until January 1786 did he actually serve as junior lieutenant.
For the production of the final aluminium, ioo parts of the chloride and 45 parts of cryolite to serve as a flux were powdered together and mixed with 35 parts of sodium cut into small pieces.
In France the leaves serve as fodder.
Superior court and common pleas judges serve for ten years, and justices of the peace for five.
The origin of such unendowed curacies is traceable to the fact that benefices were sometimes granted to religious houses pleno jure, and with liberty for them to provide for the cure; and when such appropriations were transferred to lay persons, being unable to serve themselves, the impropriators were required to nominate a clerk in full orders to the.
When Otto Ritschl interprets values hedonistically - recoiling from Hegel's idealism the whole way to empiricism - he brings again to our minds the doubt whether hedonist ethics can serve as a foundation for any religious belief.
The cormus is always differentiated into two parts; an upper portion termed the nectosome, in which the appendages are locomotor or hydrostatic in function, that is to say, serve for swimming or floating; and a lower portion termed the siphosome, bearing appendages which are nutritive, reproductive or simply protective in function.
There, the large cables divide into a number of small cables, which are carried along the footways in pipes and are tapped at suitable points to serve subscribers.
Besides the delta of the Po and the large marshy tracts which it forms, there exist on both sides of it extensive lagoons of salt water, generally separated from the Adriatic by narrow strips of sand or embankments, partly natural and partly artificial, but havin openings which admit the influx and efflux of the sea-water, and serve as ports for communication with the mainland.
Mutual benefit and co-operative societies serve the purpose of working-class defence or offence against the employers.
The building of this altar is spread over a whole year, during which period the sacrificer has to carry about the sacrificial fire in an earthen pan for at least some time each day, until it is finally deposited on the completed altar to serve as the offering-fire for the Soma oblations.
There must be a God, who could compel irrational matter to serve rational ends - so ran the old argument.
Steam-tramways also serve many parts of the province.
There is communication both south and north by rail, and regular steamers serve the ports of the colony, the principal Pacific Islands, Australia, &c. From 1853 to 1876 Auckland was the seat of the provincial government, and until 1865 that of the central government, which was then transferred to Wellington.
In all cases, while the internal threads which bear the cortical branches consist of elongated cells with few chromatophores, and no doubt serve mainly for conduction of food substances, the superficial cells of the branches themselves are packed with chromatophores and form the chief assimilating tissue of the plant.
In the bulky forms colorless branches frequently grow out from some of the cortical cells, and, pushing among the already-formed threads in a longitudinal direction, serve to strengthen the thallus by weaving its original threads together.
The internal tissue of the body of the solid higher Fungi, particularly the elongated stalks (stipes) of the fructifications of the Agarics, consists of hyphae running in a longitudinal direction, which no doubt serve for the conduction of organic food substances, just as do the trumpet-hyphae, similar in appearance, though not in origin, of the higher Brown Seaweeds.
The internal tissues, either consisting of obvious hyphae or of pseudoparenchyma, may also serve as a storehouse of plastic food substances.
They serve to conduct water through the thallus, the assimilating parts of which are in these forms often raised above the soil and are comparatively remote from the rhizoid-bearing (water-absorbing) region.
These serve not only to protect the plant against slight P dermis.
The stomata serve for all gaseous interchange between the plant and the surrounding air.
These may well serve as conductors of nervous impulses.
It is easy to realize how such a rhythm can be modified by the reception of stimuli, and can consequently serve as the basis for the movement of the stimulated organ.
As regards money value alone the following figures may serve in illustration.
But it also appears that honeydew may be excreted by ordinary processes of over-turgescence pressing the liquid through water-pores, as in the tropical Caesalpinia, Calliandra, &c. That these exudations on leaves should afterwards serve as pabulum for Fungie.g.
Those chromatophores which remain colorless, and serve simply as starch-f ormers in parts of the plant not exposed to the light, are called leucoplasts or amyloplasts.
It is convenient to employ a specific name for a projection of a coast-line less pronounced than a peninsula, and for an inlet less pronounced than a bay or bight; outcurve and incurve may serve the turn.
If land forms may be compared to organs, the part they serve in the economy of the earth may, without straining the term, be characterized as functions.
Supra-angular and coronoid splint-bones serve for the insertion of part of the temporal or masseter muscle.
Dorsal vertebrae frequently have a ventral outgrowth of the centrum; these hypapophyses may be simple vertical blades, I-shaped, or paired knobs; they serve for the attachment of the thoracic origin of the longus collianticus muscle, reaching their greatest development in Sphenisci and Colymbidae.
In 1892 he was elected to the Dominion Parliament, but in 1899 he interrupted his political career to serve in the South African War, where he commanded a mixed force of English and colonial scouts in western Cape Colony.
The strictness of the principle of admission or exclusion differs at the various German courts, and has tended to be modified by the growth of a new aristocracy of wealth; but a single instance known to the present writer may serve to illustrate the fundamental divergence of German (a fortiori Austrian) ideas from English in this matter.
Other things being equal, that route is best which will serve the district most conveniently and secure the highest revenue; and the most favourable combination of curves and gradients is that by which the annual cost of conveying the traffic which the line will be called on to carry, added to the annual interest on the capital expended in construction, will be made a minimum.
This may be rectangular in shape (" straight " shed), containing a series of parallel tracks on which the engines stand and which are reached by means of points and crossings diverging from a main track outside; or it may take a polygonal or circular form (round house or rotunda), the lines for the engines radiating from a turn-table which occupies the centre and can be rotated so as to serve any of the radiating lines.
A mound of earth was raised which would serve as a platform on which the victim would be slaughtered in the presence of the concourse of spectators.
The Mecaptera, with their predominantly longitudinal wing-nervuration, serve as a link between the Neuroptera and the Trichoptera, their retention of small cerci being an archaic character which stamps them as synthetic in type, but does not necessarily remove them from orders which agree with them in most points of structure but which have lost the cerci.
Mostly they serve rather as beautiful promenades.
As the sinking of shafts or the driving of narrow entries or drifts is expensive, and as the mineral extracted rarely pays more than a small fraction of the cost, it is usual to plan this exploratory work so that the openings made shall serve some useful purpose later.
These cases must serve to illustrate the theory.