[f. as prec. with -ING2.]
† 1. Serving the time or season; serviceable, seasonable. Obs. rare1.
1627. Perrot, Tithes, 70. His ships full richly stowed with all manner of choice and time-serving commodities.
2. Characterized by interested compliance; trimming, temporizing.
1630. Prynne, Anti-Armin., 77. Not by some one or two ambitious, time-seruing, nouellizing Diuines.
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.
1809. Malkin, Gil Blas, XII. iii. (Rtldg.), 428. The school of time-serving morality.
186070. Stubbs, Lect. Europ. Hist., I. viii. (1904), 100. The leading man was a time-serving rogue.
Hence Time-servingness.
a. 1734. North, Lives (1826), I. 2. [I] ascribe it chiefly to ignorance, although I think time-servingness and malice hath the greatest Share.
1812. Shelley, in Hogg, Life (1858), II. 196. The address so barefaced a piece of time-servingness.
1890. Lippincotts Mag., May, 763. The cowardice and the time-servingness.