obeisance

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}]
    

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]
    

Obeisance
homage or reverence to any one (Gen. 37:7; 43:28).
    

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