serve

/sɜːv/ verb

Definition

› [T] to provide people or a place with products or services or something that is needed: serve customers/clients There is a new 24-hour bus that serves the airport.

› [I or T] to help achieve something or to be useful as something: serve to do sth The new procedures serve to stop economic growth. The phone application needs to serve a purpose.

› [T] COMMERCE in a shop, restaurant, or hotel, to deal with a customer by taking their order, showing or selling them goods, etc.: She spends all day on the shop floor serving customers. Are you being served?

› [I or T] to provide food or drinks: He was served dinner in his room. Breakfast is served between 7 and 9.

› [I or T] to spend time doing a job, training for a job, or having a responsibility: serve as sth He became a city commissioner and went on to serve as mayor. After serving an apprenticeship with his father, he received a scholarship to study in Italy.

› [T] LAW to give a legal document to someone, demanding that they go to a court of law or that they obey an order: The pension trustees served a writ last Friday in New York.serve sb with sth She was served with a summons to court.

(Definition of serve verb from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

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