Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality or condition of being obedient.
  • noun The act of obeying.
  • noun A sphere of ecclesiastical authority.
  • noun A group of people under such authority.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun 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.
  • noun Words or action expressive of reverence or dutifulness; obeisance.
  • noun 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).
  • noun 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.
  • noun 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.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

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

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The quality of being obedient.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun behavior intended to please your parents
  • noun the act of obeying; dutiful or submissive behavior with respect to another person
  • noun the trait of being willing to obey

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman obedience, from Old French obedience (modern French obédience), from Latin oboedientia.

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