[syn: obedience, obeisance]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Obeisance \O*bei"sance\, n. [F. ob['e]issance obedience, fr.
ob['e]issant. See Obey, and cf. Obedience, Abaisance.]
1. Obedience. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
[1913 Webster]
2. Deference or homage, or an expression of deference or
respect; a bow; a curtsy.
[1913 Webster +PJC]
Bathsheba bowed and did obeisance unto the king. --1
Kings i. 16.
[1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
obeisance
n 1: bending the head or body or knee as a sign of reverence or
submission or shame or greeting [syn: bow, bowing,
obeisance]
2: the act of obeying; dutiful or submissive behavior with
respect to another person [syn: obedience, obeisance]
[ant: disobedience, noncompliance]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
80 Moby Thesaurus words for "obeisance":
acceptance, acquiescence, allegiance, apple-polishing, ass-kissing,
assent, backscratching, bend, bending the knee, bob, bootlicking,
bow, bowing and scraping, brown-nosing, complaisance, compliance,
consent, cringing, crouch, curtsy, deference, dipping the colors,
duck, fawnery, fawning, fealty, flunkyism, footlicking,
genuflection, groveling, handshaking, homage, honor, inclination,
ingratiation, insinuation, kneeling, kowtow, loyalty, making a leg,
mealymouthedness, nod, nonopposal, nonopposition, nonresistance,
obedience, obsequiousness, parasitism, passiveness, passivity,
presenting arms, prostration, resignation, resignedness, respect,
respectfulness, reverence, salaam, salutation, salute, scrape,
servility, sponging, squat, standing at attention, stoop,
subjection, submission, submissiveness, submittal, supination,
supineness, sycophancy, timeserving, toadeating, toadying,
toadyism, truckling, tufthunting, yielding
Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary:
Obeisance
homage or reverence to any one (Gen. 37:7; 43:28).