servants

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of servant.

   The estate employed dozens of servants to maintain its sprawling grounds.

   Loyal servants attended the family through three generations.

   Note

   A regular plural, formed with -s like most English nouns, and it carries every sense of the singular. These include hired household staff (as distinct from slaves), anyone who helps another, people devoted to God, and in older writing a professed lover. The same spelling is also an obsolete verb form, but in modern text servants is almost always this noun.

2. 2
   verbobsolete

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of servant.

   Note

   An obsolete verb hides behind this spelling: servant once meant to subject, to bring someone under another's rule. It was transitive and took a direct object, as subject does (a conqueror servants a people). Its present tense was formed regularly with -s. A reader will meet it only in old texts. Elsewhere the spelling belongs to the plural noun.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2