Disobedience is a refusal to do as you are told. Open disobedience, civil disobedience, punished for disobedience.
Civil disobedience is deliberate public law-breaking as protest, accepting the penalty as part of the point — Thoreau named it and Gandhi and King made it a method. In institutions it is a disciplinary matter. Note that the word displaced the Old English unhiersumnes, which was built the same way from a verb meaning to hear, since obeying was listening.
1noundisobedienceA refusal to do as you are told.
“The soldier was punished for disobedience after he refused to follow a direct order.”
disobedience is a refusal to comply.
Old French desobedience comes from Latin oboedire, to listen towards. It displaced the Old English unhiersumnes, built from the same idea of hearing.
Old French
desobedience
Middle English
disobedience
English, today
disobedience
From Middle English disobedience, dysobediaunce, from Old French desobedience. by surface analysis, dis- + obedience. Displaced native unhīersumnes.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA