obedience
/oʊˈbidiəns/noun
obedience is spelled O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E. The wrong spelling people search most is obediance: about 110 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 15 of all searches for the word. Obedience is a noun meaning “The quality of being obedient”. The plural of obedience is obediences.
How many letters and syllables are in obedience?
| Letters | 9: O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 3.2 times per million words; the 14,928th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, obediance, about 110 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell obedience?
Obedience is spelled O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 15 of the searches for obedience in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is obedience?
Obedience appears 3.2 times per million words in written English, the 14,928th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce obedience?
- UK /ə(ʊ)ˈbiːdɪəns/
- US /oʊˈbidiəns/
- US /əˈbidiəns/
Obedience has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-obedience.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of obedience
- obediences plural
- oboedience
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does obedience mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The quality of being obedient.
Obedience is essential in any army.
- 2
The collective body of persons subject to any particular authority.
- 3
A written instruction from the superior of an order to those under him.
- 4
Any official position under an abbot's jurisdiction.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Obedience in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense quality of being obedient:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | obéissance |
| German | Gehorsam, Folgsamkeit, Gehorsamkeit |
| Portuguese | obediência |
| Spanish | obediencia |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does obedience come from?
From Middle English obedience, from Anglo-Norman obedience, from Old French obedience (modern French obédience), from Latin oboedientia. Displaced native Old English hīersumnes (compare modern English hearsomeness). Cognate with obeisance.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).