verb. (old).—1.  To rob: e.g., ‘I SERVED him for his thimble’ = ‘I robbed him of his watch’ (GROSE and VAUX).

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  2.  See SERVANT and TIME.

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  3.  (thieves’).—‘To find guilty, convict, and sentence’ (GROSE).

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  4.  (old).—To maim; to wound; to PUNISH (q.v.): whence TO SERVE OUT = to take revenge; TO SERVE OUT AND OUT = to kill (GROSE and VAUX).

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  1819.  T. MOORE, Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress.

        And whoso’er grew unpolite,
The well-bred Champion SERV’D HIM OUT.

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  1821.  P. EGAN, Life in London, II. ii. Squinting Nan, full of jealousy…, is getting over the box to SARVE HER OUT for her duplicity.

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  1837–40.  HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), The Clockmaker (1848), 12. Now the bees know how to SARVE OUT such chaps, for they have their drones, too.

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  1853.  BULWER-LYTTON, My Novel, xii. 25. The Right Honourable Gentleman had boasted he had served his country for twenty years…. He should have said SERVED HER OUT.

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  1868.  GREENWOOD, The Purgatory of Peter the Cruel, i., 22. I am doomed to become a blackbeetle because of the many of the sort I have hurt and smashed, and more especially because I SERVED this wretched cockroach OUT.

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  TO SERVE UP, verb. phr. (American).—To ridicule.

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  See SLOPS.

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