They chiefly serve their own interests, acting with impunity and taking political orders from the top.
Emphasis on gold continued, with silver and some bronze; gold chiefly served for the triens, or third (1/3 of the Constantinian solidus).
The Medicaid programme must now achieve savings mostly by cutting spending for hospitals that chiefly serve the poor.Another "windfall" victim was a legislated recalculation of the consumer price index to correct its over-statement of inflation, a move which would have helped to curb the rise in entitlement costs.
If there is a raid, police find only a few counterfeit samples in a sea of cheap nonbranded goods, the latter chiefly serving as a cover.
With growth slowing, Mr Xi's patriotic doctrine looks as if it is designed chiefly to serve as a new source of legitimacy for the Communist Party.
An intervention to uphold the democratic principle is therefore in a clearly different category from a Chinese push into Vladivostok, or another crack at Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, or any other intervention designed chiefly to serve the interests of the interveners.
In 1816, one of the UK's first co-operative societies was started in Sheerness, chiefly to serve the dockyard workers and their families.
This being usually seen as a fault, the word serves chiefly as a term of abuse.
The occasional gem that the BBC still produces, such as "The Blue Planet", a nature programme ritually rolled out as a counter to these charges, serves chiefly to highlight the mediocrity of the rest of its schedule.
Some of their distinctive traits: they are unintelligent - flight becomes, a substitute for cleverness; they seem to have almost all their sensory perceptions blunted - their powers of touch and smell are rudimentary; the ear serves chiefly as an organ of equilibrium.
