serve someone right
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to deserve or be a fitting consequence for someone's actions
Literally: to provide a service to someone as a rightful response
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Dempsey's tooth there's all blood coming out of his mouth I said see, serves you right.
Rhoda said when she came to tea at the weekend, ‘ You only remember what you want to remember, Ken; serve you right.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “serve someone right” mean?
to deserve or be a fitting consequence for someone's actions Literally: to provide a service to someone as a rightful response
Is “serve someone right” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.