Obeisance

The dictator enforced obeisance on the people.

The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.

And they answered: Thy servant our father is in health; he is yet living. And bowing themselves, they made obeisance to him.

And the protesters across the globe appear to be combining smartly offline and online tools, copying each other, even street opponents, feeding on a new era of anger, in which losers even in countries that hold fair elections are not prepared to accept the results and winners demand all too often total obeisance from those vanquished at the polls.

In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; / Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But looking upwards in the blaze of the moon I suddenly saw colossi sitting near, and towering up and blotting out the stars and filling the night with blackness; and at those idols’ feet I saw praying and making obeisance kings and the days that are and all times and all cities and all nations and all their gods.

The situation in the case of actions which are non-linguistic but similar to performative utterances in that they are the performance of a conventional action (here ritual or ceremonial) is rather like this: suppose I bow deeply before you; it might not be clear whether I am doing obeisance to you or, say, stooping to observe the flora or to ease my indigestion.