Noah Webster
Menial
ME'NIAL, adjective
1. Pertaining to servants or domestic servants; low; mean.
The women attendants perform only the most menial offices.
[Johnson observes on this passage, that Swift seems not to have known the meaning of this word. But this is the only sense in which it is now used.]
2. Belonging to the retinue or train of servants.
Two menial dogs before their master pressed.
[If this definition of Johnson is correct, it indicates that menial is from meinez, many, rather than from mesnie, family. But the sense may be house-dogs.]