Obedience is doing as you are told, and the training that teaches it. Dog obedience, obedience class, blind obedience.
In dog training it is the whole discipline of sit, stay and recall, and obedience competitions are judged on precision. Applied to people it is more loaded: blind obedience is a criticism, and obedience to authority is the subject of some of the most famous and most disputed experiments in psychology. Note obedient, obediently; and that religious orders take a vow of obedience alongside poverty and chastity.
1nounobedienceDoing as you are told.
“The dog was trained to perfect obedience and sat the moment she spoke.”
obedience is compliance with orders.
Latin oboedientia comes from oboedire, to obey — ob plus audire, to listen. To obey is literally to listen towards, and audience and audio are the same listening.
Latin
oboedientia
Old French
obedience
Anglo-Norman
obedience
Middle English
obedience
English, today
obedience
From Middle English obedience, from Anglo-Norman obedience, from Old French obedience (modern French obédience), from Latin oboedientia. Displaced native hīersumnes (compare modern English hearsomeness). Cognate with obeisance.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA