Obeisance

Noun

 * 1) Demonstration of an obedient attitude, especially by a bow
 * 2) * 1845, Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven":
 * Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, / In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; / Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; / But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — / Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — / Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
 * 1) An obedient attitude.

Thesaurus
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

Etymology
obeisaunce:, from obeïssance:, derived from obeïssant:, participle of obeïr:, from Latin oboedire:, obedire:;  ob-: + audire:.

Quotations

 * The situation in the case of actions which are non-linguistic but similar to performative utterances in that they are the performance of a conventional action (here ritual or ceremonial) is rather like this : suppose I bow deeply before you; it might not be clear whether I am doing obeisance to you or, say, stooping to observe the flora or to ease my indigestion. - "How To Do Things With Words" (1962) by JL Austin (OUP paperback edition, 69)