verb

• 1Submit to the authority of (someone) or comply with (a law)

  ‘I always obey my father’

  More example sentences

  • ‘He knew that his people would always obey him, but no one ever visited him just to talk.’
  • ‘He was meant for royalty and people always obeyed him.’
  • ‘Jace always obeyed his mother, and respected her to the utmost.’
  • ‘I immediately chased after her, obeying her as I always did.’
  • ‘My kids will one day set up their own household and I hope they will always love me, but they are certainly not going to always obey me.’
  • ‘They are no longer puritanical and oriented to obeying an authoritarian God.’
  • ‘Everyone around Alan always obeyed Jason and Alan himself was no exception to the rule.’
  • ‘In this matter of seizing a child as you put it, which is against our laws, we cannot obey you.’
  • ‘But my fear of my father forced me to obey him and I cautiously made my way to the parlor.’
  • ‘The intelligence chief agreed to obey his political masters, and the fell deed was done.’
  • ‘Keziah didn't know how much authority he had, but found herself obeying him anyway.’
  • ‘They are taught to be polite, obey their parents, and defer to authority.’
  • ‘He learned the way of holiness by obeying his Father.’
  • ‘People obeyed him because they were afraid of him; they feared him because he was a murderous thug, surrounded by an entourage of murderous thugs.’
  • ‘Though Helge obeyed his father and joined the business, he spent every spare moment studying art, travelling constantly.’
  • ‘A woman used to be required to obey her father before marriage, her husband during married life, and her sons in widowhood.’
  • ‘The subjects must obey the emperor, and sons must obey their father.’
  • ‘You are protected by me and my power like every other vampire who follows and obeys me.’
  • ‘‘No, you better go too,’ we obeyed him and followed the other vampires into the lounge.’
  • ‘Dutifully, Eaton obeyed his mother and followed her, but he could not help but look behind him.’

  Synonyms

  do what someone says, accept orders from, take orders from, carry follow the orders of, carry out the orders of, be dutiful to, heed

  comply with, adhere to, observe, abide by, act in accordance with, conform to, respect, acquiesce in, consent to, agree to, follow, accept, keep to, stick to

  View synonyms

  1. 1.1Carry out (a command or instruction)
     ‘the officer was convicted for refusing to obey orders’
     More example sentences

     • ‘when the order was repeated, he refused to obey’
     • ‘The most likely explanation is that the militias' leadership is ordering this restraint, obeying the instructions of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.’
     • ‘They can only eat at set times, must carry ID cards, obey all staff instructions and are only allowed restricted visits.’
     • ‘The military commanders refused to obey their orders, in their minds for good and sufficient reasons.’
     • ‘Sometimes, the stolen pets are not controllable or refuse to obey the commands of the thieves, leading to a round of beatings.’
     • ‘By issuing the order, the Ministry of Defence can argue that the soldier endangered himself by refusing to obey the command.’
     • ‘The officer refused to obey the guard's instructions and continued on his merry way.’
     • ‘Some of the men refused to obey an instruction from a police officer to turn back from the pits, and were arrested.’
     • ‘Local military commanders, however, refused to obey Sharif's order that the plane be prevented from landing.’
     • ‘I find that the father was justified in feeling that the mother was refusing to obey court orders, with impunity.’
     • ‘Bin workers refused to obey the order, saying they did not want to be dragged into the dispute by facilitating the arrest of protesters.’
     • ‘Harrisburg police say the pastors refused to obey their orders to stay more than 50 feet from the park.’
     • ‘The result was that men all wore plaited queues, but the women refused to obey the order, and continued to have their feet bound.’
     • ‘Men, women and children are tear-gassed and sprayed with capisicum spray when they refuse to obey orders.’
     • ‘One constable slapped a Bengali photographer who refused to obey his orders on the first day of the Rawalpindi Test.’
     • ‘These officials should be instructed that they have the right and duty to refuse to obey any order to participate in torture.’
     • ‘And on the need for contempt powers, he recounted how officials at times refused to obey the orders.’
     • ‘The soldiers obeyed his command because Rexil had ordered them to.’
     • ‘You must obey the instructions contained in this order.’
     • ‘Captain Harper shouted out orders to his crew, who rushed to obey his commands.’
     • ‘If the Russian commanders had obeyed orders and withdrawn in good time Russian dignity would have been preserved.’
     Synonyms

     carry out, perform, act on, execute, discharge, put into effect, implement, fulfil, meet

     View synonyms
  2. 1.2Behave in accordance with (a general principle, natural law, etc.)
     ‘the universe was complex but it obeyed certain rules’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Though sympathetic toward General Tang, Li said he still felt compelled to criticize General Tang for not obeying the moral principles of the military to never reprove superior officers.’
     • ‘Both generators obey the first ground rule of satire: meticulous observation.’
     • ‘The world looked on, deaf to pleas to intervene, and even when the president last week removed freedom of the press, the Commonwealth only uttered pious warnings about obeying democratic principles.’
     • ‘Sure web space is not free space, but you'd think a website especially devoted to dissenting opinions would tend to obey its own principles.’
     • ‘I want to strictly obey the principle that any difference theoretically impossible to detect is no difference at all.’
     • ‘So the Planck length arises naturally when we ask what is the minimal size object we can make which doesn't collapse into a black hole and which obeys the uncertainty principle.’
     • ‘The melancholic's experience is very different, partly because the loss being grieved rarely obeys the reality principle.’
     • ‘He said obedience brought about prosperity to any body that vowed to look to obeying God's principles.’
     • ‘It can have that appearance only if it appears to obey certain principles.’
     • ‘Bellaria's death obeys the principle brought out in Ovid, that the fulfillment of the wish to know the object of desire only circumvents the logic of desire and destroys the object itself.’
     • ‘They also proceeded to explore the reasons why gases do not always behave ideally and obey this equation.’
     • ‘A love story between Adele and Rannulph could have obeyed cinematic formulas, but it doesn't.’
     • ‘This field obeys the expected equations of motion for an electromagnetic vector potential in four spacetime dimensions.’
     • ‘The distribution of probability amplitudes obeys wave-like equations, the amplitude changing in space-time like a wave does.’
     • ‘According to them citizens must live and obey the governing rules of their society, but only contractually.’
     • ‘No matter that we didn't obey the golden rules - we were adults who could look after ourselves.’
     • ‘The most satisfying examples of it occur when the nonsense operates according to the rules of an anarchic universe, and obeys logic within this context.’
     • ‘These two characteristics appear to be stable under many growth conditions and their inheritance obeys the rules of normal Mendelian genetics.’
     • ‘One need only consider Black Holes to see how Existence obeys rules which are difficult for our minds to accept.’
     • ‘Well, that is until I am lynched by my fellow passengers for not obeying the unwritten rules of travel on the London Underground.’