obedience

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The quality or condition of being obedient.
2. n. The act of obeying.
3. n. A sphere of ecclesiastical authority.
4. n. A group of people under such authority.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act or habit of obeying; dutiful compliance with a command, prohibition, or known law and rule prescribed; submission to authority: as, to reduce a refractory person to obedience.
2. n. Words or action expressive of reverence or dutifulness; obeisance.
3. n. A collective body of those who adhere to some particular authority: as, the king's obedience; specifically, the collective body of those who adhere or yield obedience to an ecclesiastical authority: as, the Roman obedience, or the churches of the Roman obedience (that is, the aggregate of persons or of national churches acknowledging the authority of the Pope).
4. n. Eccles.: A written precept or other formal instrument by which a superior in a religious order communicates to one of his dependents any special admonition or instruction.
5. n. In Roman Catholic monasteries, any ecclesiastical and official position, with the estate and profits belonging to it, which is subordinate to the abbot's jurisdiction.

Wiktionary

1. n. The quality of being obedient.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of obeying, or the state of being obedient; compliance with that which is required by authority; subjection to rightful restraint or control.
2. n. Words or actions denoting submission to authority; dutifulness.
3. n. A following; a body of adherents.
4. n. A cell (or offshoot of a larger monastery) governed by a prior.
5. n. One of the three monastic vows.
6. n. The written precept of a superior in a religious order or congregation to a subject.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. behavior intended to please your parents
2. n. the act of obeying; dutiful or submissive behavior with respect to another person
3. n. the trait of being willing to obey