ancillary

Pluralancillaries

1. 1
   secondaryadjective

   Playing a secondary role beneath something more important or central, and serving to support it.

   The committee treated cost as ancillary to the question of patient safety.

   The airport earns much of its revenue from ancillary services such as parking and retail.

   Similaraccessory

   Oppositemain, primary, central, principal

   Note

   An adjective that still remembers the household it came from: Latin ancilla meant “maid,” and ancillāris described what belonged to maids. What is ancillary waits on something else rather than standing alone. Name what it serves and the preposition is to: Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature (1836) has nature become “ancillary to a man.” Without one, it sorts things into a supporting class: staff can be academic, administrative or ancillary.

2. 2
   extra partnouncountable

   Something that plays a supporting or secondary role alongside a main task or thing, as an easel does for a painter.

   Mechanics checked the engine's ancillaries, from the alternator to the cooling fan, before the locomotive left the depot.

   For a wedding photographer, a spare battery is the most important ancillary in the bag.

   Similaraccessory, adjunct

   Note

   On the railways the plural does practical work: Railway Magazine in November 1950 lists a diesel-electric locomotive's “auxiliaries and ancillaries” side by side, among them a motor-driven compressor and exhauster sets for the train brakes. The pairing is the useful hint: ancillaries sits naturally beside auxiliaries, and both name equipment that serves a machine without doing its central work, much as an easel serves a painter without painting.

3. 3
   assistant (old)nounarchaic

   A person or thing that gives extra help or support to someone or something else.

   The surveyor hired a local ancillary to hold the measuring chain and clear brush from the line.

   Every master in the workshop kept two or three ancillaries to fetch tools and tend the fire.

   Note

   This broad noun now belongs to historical writing or deliberate period color. Its roots explain why it can name a person: Latin ancilla meant "maid," and ancillāris described what related to maids, so the word began in household service. For the same meaning in present-day prose, auxiliary or assistant is the natural choice, while ancillary itself is most at home as the adjective.

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