Other forms: genuflecting, genuflects
To genuflect is to touch one knee to the ground in reverence. Genuflect before the altar, genuflecting quickly, genuflection.
It is done on the right knee towards the tabernacle in Catholic practice, and it differs from kneeling, which is longer and for prayer. Figuratively it means to defer to somebody excessively. The Latin is simply knee plus bend.
1verbgenuflectTo touch one knee to the ground in reverence.
“Before entering the pew, she genuflected towards the altar.”
genuflect is a gesture.
Medieval Latin genuflectere is genu, a knee, plus flectere, to bend. Flexible comes from the same bending.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵónu
Latin
genū — knee
Medieval Latin
genūflectō — to bend the knee
English, today
genuflect
Built from
From around 1620–1630 from Medieval Latin genūflectō (“to bend the knee”) equivalent to the Latin genū (“knee”) + flectō (“to bend”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA