[f. as prec. with -ING2.]

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  † 1.  Serving the time or season; serviceable, seasonable. Obs. rare1.

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1627.  Perrot, Tithes, 70. His ships … full richly stowed with all manner of choice and time-serving commodities.

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  2.  Characterized by interested compliance; ‘trimming,’ temporizing.

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1630.  Prynne, Anti-Armin., 77. Not by some one or two ambitious, time-seruing, nouellizing Diuines.

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1638.  Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (ed. 2), 99. His owne two sonnes … brought also to Mahobet by tyme-serving Madoffer-chan to abide his mercy.

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1809.  Malkin, Gil Blas, XII. iii. (Rtldg.), 428. The school of time-serving morality.

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1860–70.  Stubbs, Lect. Europ. Hist., I. viii. (1904), 100. The leading man … was a time-serving rogue.

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  Hence Time-servingness.

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a. 1734.  North, Lives (1826), I. 2. [I] ascribe it chiefly to ignorance, although I think time-servingness and malice hath the greatest Share.

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1812.  Shelley, in Hogg, Life (1858), II. 196. The address … so barefaced a piece of time-servingness.

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1890.  Lippincott’s Mag., May, 763. The cowardice and the time-servingness.

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