Synonyms:
observation, observance, watching
Meaning: the act of observing; taking a patient look
Usage examples
It had its rural festivals and holiday pastimes, and still kept up some faint observance of the once popular rites of May.
The needs of the country necessitated the continuance of agricultural methods and the rigid observance of existing land laws; indeed, these constituted the basis of Sumerian prosperity.
Shall I, to take a step farther, degrade the sanctity of the closet, hallowed in the words of Jesus, by shutting its door in the vain fancy of there doing something that God requires of me as a sacred OBSERVANCE?
But this justification, grounded on the direct interest which others have in each individual's observance of the practice, does not apply to the self-chosen occupations in which a person may think fit to employ his leisure; nor does it hold good, in the smallest degree, for legal restrictions on amusements.
If, a hundred years earlier, when the division in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise as to abstain from requiring the observance of a few forms which a large part of her subjects considered as Popish, she might perhaps have averted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death, afflicted the Church.
In former times every woman who gave birth to a child or passed through a miscarriage was exposed to grave danger of infection or child-bed fever; but at present--thanks to the recognition of the bacterial origin of the disease and of its identity with wound infection--this danger can be practically eliminated by the rigid observance of surgical cleanliness and aseptic technique.
On the other hand, they are most pertinaciously resisted by those who strive after salvation solely by their observance of and reverence for ceremonies, as if they would be saved merely because they fast on stated days, or abstain from flesh, or make formal prayers; talking loudly of the precepts of the Church and of the Fathers, and not caring a straw about those things which belong to our genuine faith.