genuflection

American  

[jen-yoo-flek-shuhn] / ˌdʒɛn yʊˈflɛk ʃən /

especially British, genuflexion

noun

1. an act of bending the knee or touching it to the ground in reverence or worship.

---

Etymology

Origin of genuflection

First recorded in 1520–30, genuflection is from the Medieval Latin word genūflexiōn- (stem of genūflexiō ). See genuflect, -ion

Example Sentences

To her left, Melvin Gibbs played electric bass—sometimes nonchalantly, sometimes with one bent knee, as if in genuflection.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 4, 2026

Or is something else happening; is the press manifesting an unadmitted genuflection to raw power, exercised arbitrarily, out of calculated self-preservation?

From Salon • Nov. 1, 2024

At earlier hearings, university presidents opted for strategies of conciliatory genuflection or drab, lawyerly answers.

From New York Times • May 9, 2024

But Adam didn’t do rhyme and meter, for one thing — too much like mandatory genuflection in church, he once remarked.

From Washington Post • Feb. 23, 2023

It was a Benediction of nature, a genuflection of trees and flowers, singing in the wind, incensing with their perfume the sacred Bread which shone on high, in the flaming custody of the planet.

From En Route by Huysmans, J.-K. (Joris-Karl)