OBSERVANCE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Observance

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/əbzˈərvəns/ Listen

noun

Observance n.

1.

The act or practice of observing or noticing with attention; a heeding or keeping with care; performance; usually with a sense of strictness and fidelity; as, the observance of the Sabbath is general; the strict observance of duties. "It is a custom More honored in the breach than the observance."

2.

An act, ceremony, or rite, as of worship or respect; especially, a customary act or service of attention; a form; a practice; a rite; a custom. "At dances These young folk kept their observances." "Use all the observance of civility." "Some represent to themselves the whole of religion as consisting in a few easy observances." "O I that wasted time to tend upon her, To compass her with sweet observances!"

3.

Servile attention; sycophancy. (Obs.) "Salads and flesh, such as their haste could get, Served with observance." "This is not atheism, But court observance."

Synonyms: Observance, Observation. These words are discriminated by the two distinct senses of observe. To observe means (1) to keep strictly; as, to observe a fast day, and hence, observance denotes the keeping or heeding with strictness; (2) to consider attentively, or to remark; and hence, observation denotes either the act of observing, or some remark made as the result thereof. We do not say the observation of Sunday, though the word was formerly so used. The Pharisees were curious in external observances; the astronomers are curious in celestial observations. "Love rigid honesty, And strict observance of impartial laws."

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Etymology of 'Observance'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Observance" Quotes from Famous Books

... hear me: If I do not put on a sober habit, Talk with respect, and swear but now and then, Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely; Nay more, while grace is saying, hood mine eyes[58] Thus with my hat, and sigh, and say amen; Use all the observance of civility, Like one well studied in a sad ostent;[59] To please his grandam,—never trust ...

— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... attracted much attention in Ireland, but was passed unnoticed in Great Britain. In a sonnet, written by a leading Fellow of the College in "T.C.D.," the College magazine, the writer spoke of the Catholic churches in Ireland as "grim monuments of cold observance, the incestuous mate of superstition," of which "to seeing eyes each tall steeple lifts its tall head and lies." Sentiments of this kind, expressed in such taste, are not calculated to encourage Catholic parents to send their sons to a college where they ...

— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... dread and aversion to a large body of dissenters. The truth is that the time for such a scheme had gone by. If, a hundred years earlier, when the division in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise as to abstain from requiring the observance of a few forms which a large part of her subjects considered as Popish, she might perhaps have averted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death, afflicted the Church. But the general tendency of ...

— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... from the violence of another, they again united and formed nations. This combination laid the foundation of civilisation, and as that extended, these beasts of prey retired to the confines of the country, enforcing while they still remain the observance of that law of nature which assigned to them this ...

— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... deal with. No sooner did the pressure of outside attack abate than antagonisms began pretty sharply to declare themselves. In 1832 Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, pastor of the Second Church in Boston, proposed to the church to abandon or radically change the observance of the Lord's Supper. When the church demurred at this extraordinary demand he resigned his office, firing off an elaborate argument against the usage of the church by way of a parting salute. Without any formal demission of the ministry, he retired to his ...

— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

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