Reverence is deep respect close to worship. Treat with reverence, great reverence, a reverence for tradition.
It is stronger than respect and carries a hush with it: reverence is what people show in cathedrals, at graves and towards things they will not argue about. It can be a criticism — an uncritical reverence for the past. Note revere as the verb, reverent as the adjective; and Your Reverence, an old form of address to a priest, which survives in Ireland and in fiction.
1nounreverenceDeep respect close to worship.
“The old man spoke of his teacher with deep reverence.”
reverence is a form of deep respect.
Latin reverentia comes from revereri, to stand in awe — re- plus vereri, to fear or heed. Revere and reverend come from the same standing in awe.
Latin
reverentia
Old French
reverence
Middle English
reverence
English, today
reverence
From Middle English reverence and reverencen, from Old French reverence and Latin reverentia, from Latin revereor (“to stand in awe, respect, revere”), from re- + vereor, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European wer- (“to cover, heed, notice”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA