What's the difference between obeisance and reverence?

Obeisance


Definition:

  • (n.) Obedience.
  • (n.) A manifestation of obedience; an expression of difference or respect; homage; a bow; a courtesy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Kim can be expected to continue to pay obeisance to North Korea’s original governing concept of juche , self-reliance.
  • (2) He used to sit in the bath shrinking his jeans.” On both sides of the Atlantic, politicians would now offer obeisance to pop stars.
  • (3) Many guests were the Queen's "kissing cousins", which happily dispensed with protocol over who should pay obeisance to whom.
  • (4) It’s a way for them to pay obeisance to the NRA without changing the world as it is.” Texas senator John Cornyn, the author of the Republican alternative to the FBI watch list bill, took issue with Schumer’s characterization, deeming it “incredibly ignorant”.
  • (5) Blair’s obeisance to corporate power enabled the vicious and destructive policies the coalition now pursues .
  • (6) Fox Business Network has been spared having to abide by the Ginsberg demands, partly perhaps because of the strong obeisance shown by senior Republicans towards Roger Ailes, the chairman and CEO of Fox News and Fox Business Network.
  • (7) The industry makes obeisances to the ideals of “diversity” and “representation”, but many at the sharp end of abuse argue that it has so far done little to help them or to learn from their experiences.
  • (8) Both Blair and Brown abased themselves by being so obeisant to the Australian, sorry, American, godfather; but Brown, under the beneficent, and crucial, influence of Ed Balls, resisted the siren voices calling upon him to sign up for the single currency quite independently of Murdoch's propaganda.
  • (9) This obeisance to a symbol has all but destroyed the US anti-war movement – Obama's singular achievement.
  • (10) Not yet, though it has its rituals – attendees of the conferences check their cynicism in at the door; standing ovations at TED seem, at times, like mandatory acts of obeisance rather than spontaneous moments of appreciation – and it's not far off De Botton's description of the Catholic church: "collaborative, multinational, branded and highly disciplined".
  • (11) And note, more lightly, with due obeisance to the cab-rank principle, that Hunt's QC, whose arguments were said by the judge to have a "too-narrow view of the public interest", was Hugh Tomlinson, chairman and silkiest silk of Hacked Off .

Reverence


Definition:

  • (n.) Profound respect and esteem mingled with fear and affection, as for a holy being or place; the disposition to revere; veneration.
  • (n.) The act of revering; a token of respect or veneration; an obeisance.
  • (n.) That which deserves or exacts manifestations of reverence; reverend character; dignity; state.
  • (n.) A person entitled to be revered; -- a title applied to priests or other ministers with the pronouns his or your; sometimes poetically to a father.
  • (v. t.) To regard or treat with reverence; to regard with respect and affection mingled with fear; to venerate.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) She followed that with a job at Bibendum – she still talks of Simon Hopkinson, "such an elegant cook, so particular and clean and efficient", with deep reverence – and another at Roscoff in Northern Ireland.
  • (2) Many have called for the return of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Buddhist leader revered by many Tibetans.
  • (3) It is a waste of taxpayer’s money.” A third critic wrote: “What China’s National Football Team gives its fans is decades of consistent disappointment.” Some disillusioned fans called for Team China’s manager, Gao Hongbo, to be sacked and replaced with Lang Ping, the revered coach of China’s female volleyball team.
  • (4) Compaoré was 36 when he seized power in a coup in which Thomas Sankara, his former friend and one of Africa’s most revered leaders, was ousted and assassinated.
  • (5) We intend to treat claims from the most powerful factions with skepticism, not reverence.
  • (6) King notes with some amusement that he has been around so long that kids who read and loved him in the 1970s now run publishing houses and newspapers; he is revered, these days, as a grand old man of American letters.
  • (7) Four explosions hit the southern Damascus district of Sayeda Zeinab, where a revered Shia shrine is located, leaving 62 dead and 180 injured, according to the Observatory.
  • (8) Where we revere and anthropomorphise such brutal predators as sharks, tigers and bears, we view these tiny ectoparasites as worthless, an evolutionary accident with no redeeming or adorable characteristics.
  • (9) Where other titans became “Old Farts” overnight – “ No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977” as the Clash had it – Bowie stayed revered.
  • (10) It is hard to explain the significance of the man to those who may not have been born at the time or informed of the freedom struggle, or born witness to his dignity, pride, humility and moral authority, but I and so many others revered him as a father and cherished his existence as a living secular saint.
  • (11) It is the England that then prime minister John Major vowed would never vanish in a famous 1993 speech: “Long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’.” Major was mining Orwell’s wartime essay The Lion and the Unicorn, whose tone was one of reassurance – the national culture will survive, despite everything: “The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies.” Orwell and Major were both asserting the strength of a national culture at times when Britishness – for both men basically Englishness – was felt to be under threat from outside dangers (war, integration into Europe).
  • (12) But many of the MEK's American supporters speak of the organisation almost with a reverence.
  • (13) Up to half a million wolves once roamed across America , living in harmony with native Americans who revered them for supposed healing powers.
  • (14) Others are alarmed at the almost cult-like reverence that has built up around Buhari.
  • (15) Qhorin Halfhand is revered for his ability to live deep into Wildling territory for years on end.
  • (16) He inspired that odd mixture of reverence and resentment that we now associate with celebrity, a phenomenon wrongly thought modern.
  • (17) Oscar Tabárez's side may not play with the same flair and commitment to attack, but Luis Suárez demonstrated here why he is so revered and the draw has been as inviting for La Celeste as they could possibly have dared hope.
  • (18) As for potatoes, we're supposed to treat them with a reverence previously reserved for fine wine and caviar.
  • (19) It sounds like Michael Gove's worst nightmare, a country where some combination of teachers' union leaders and trendy academics, "valuing Marxism, revering jargon and fighting excellence" (to use the education secretary's words), have taken over the asylum.
  • (20) It's one thing for critics and curators to single out the next rising star from China, expecting hushed reverence from the general public, but quite another for us to genuinely engage with the art of China past and present.