obedience

• oboedience (obsolete, rare)

From Middle English obedience, from Anglo-Norman obedience, from Old French obedience (modern French obédience), from Latin oboedientia. Displaced native Old English hīersumnes. Cognate with obeisance.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ə(ʊ)ˈbiːdɪəns/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

obedience (countable and uncountable, plural obediences)

1. The quality of being obedient.

   Obedience is essential in any army.

   • February 24, 1823, Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mr. Edward Everett

     Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VIII, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:

     Cautioning Nobs to silence, and he had learned many lessons in the value of obedience since we had entered Caspak, I slunk forward, taking advantage of whatever cover I could find...

2. The collective body of persons subject to any particular authority.
3. A written instruction from the superior of an order to those under him.
4. Any official position under an abbot's jurisdiction.

• submission, the German vice; hearsomeness (nonce word)

• disobedience, defiance, rebellion (ignoring)
• violation (ignoring, especially rules)
• control, dominance (ruling)

• obedient
• obeisance
• obey

• “obedience”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “obedience”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

From Latin.

obedience oblique singular, f (oblique plural obediences, nominative singular obedience, nominative plural obediences)

1. obedience
2. authority; influence; power

   Il comaunda par obedience Ke de la femme s’en issist

   He commanded by his authority that it (the evil spirit) come out of her