" serves "

[Verb]  | "serve" | \ ˈsərv \

1: to be a servant

2: to do military or naval service

3: to assist a celebrant as server at mass

Origin: 13th century ;

 Middle English serven, sarven "to perform a duty, be employed, assume the role of personal attendant, be of use (of a body part), perform religious rites, provide food and drink (to people at a table), deliver (a legal writ)," borrowed from Anglo-French & Medieval Latin; Anglo-French servir, borrowed from Medieval Latin serviō, servīre, going back to Latin, "to perform duties for (a master) in the capacity of a slave, act in subservience, be at the service of," verbal derivative of servus "slave," perhaps, if the original sense was "watcher (of flocks), guardian," derivative with the nominal suffix *-u̯o-, of the Indo-European verbal base *ser- "keep watch on, guard," whence, with varying ablaut and derivation, Greek (Homeric) epì…órontai "they kept watch over," Greek éphoros "watcher, oversee:r," phrourós "guard, watchman" (< *pro-horós), phrourā́ "guard duty," Avestan nišhauruuaiti "(s/he) keeps watch on" (from a stem *har-u̯a-), pasuš.hauruua "guarding the flock (of a dog)," harətar- "watcher, guardian";

  * Note : The above etymology of Latin servus "slave" is carefully argued by Helmut Rix (Die Termini der Unfreiheit in den Sprachen Alt-Italiens, Stuttgart, 1994, pp. 54-88), who rejects claims that the word is of Etruscan origin. Rix hypothesizes that between about 700 b.c. and 450 b.c., as most transhumant shepherds in the Italian peninsula came to be slaves, an agent noun meaning "flock guard" developed a secondary sense "slave," and by the time of the earliest Latin texts had largely lost its original meaning (with pāstor becoming the usual word for a shepherd—see: {pastor:1|pastor:1}). The presumption is that Italic languages—as Indo-European languages generally—lacked a word for "slave," as slavery was an institution endemic to older Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations. Note that Umbrian has a verb exemplified by the imperative seritu "(let him/her) protect!" that corresponds in form but not in sense to Latin servīre, which had been repurposed to reflect the new meaning of the noun *seru̯os. Rix hypothesizes that the Latin verb servāre "to watch over, look after" originally meant exclusively "to watch (the skies for an omen)," as a derivative of a noun *seru̯ā or *seru̯om "observation (of the skies)," and suggests that its senses expanded to cover those formerly held by the repurposed verb servīre.;

[Noun]  | "serve" 

1: the act or action of putting the ball or shuttlecock in play in various games (such as volleyball, badminton, or tennis); also : a turn to serve

Origin: 1688 ;

 Derivative of {see: |serve:1|serve:1};

[Noun]  | "soft serve" | \ ˈsȯf(t)-ˌsərv \

1: a smooth semisolid ice cream that contains less milk fat than regular ice cream and is made in and dispensed from a freezer in which it is aerated and continuously churned —often used before another noun

Origin: 1955 ;

[Idiom]  | "(it) serves (someone) right" 

1: —used to say that someone who has behaved badly deserves a particular punishment, problem, etc.

[Idiom]  | "if memory serves" 

1: if I remember accurately

[Phrasal verb]  | "serve out" 

1: to complete (a term in office, a prison sentence, etc.)

[Phrasal verb]  | "serve up" 

1: to give (food) to someone at a meal, in a restaurant, etc. —sometimes used figuratively

[Verb]  | "serves" 

[Verb]  | "serve"