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Monday December 6, 2004

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genuflect \JEN-yuh-flekt\ , intransitive verb:
1. To bend the knee or touch one knee to the ground, as in worship.
2. To be servilely respectful or obedient; to grovel.

After graduation I talked my way into a job at Ionic Development Corporation, a legendary place in Cambridge on the Charles River, a huge brick building with a lobby the size of a cathedral; every time I walked in, I felt as if I should genuflect.
-- Daniel Lyons, Dog Days

People worship capital, adore its aura, genuflect before Porsches and Tokyo land values.
-- Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance (translated by Alfred Birnbaum)

Chen said recently he was proud to be a Chinese, a signal to Beijing that he is willing to be conciliatory. The communists, however, apparently want him to genuflect more unambiguously.
-- Sin-Ming Shaw, "Give This Guy a Break!", Time Asia, October 30, 2000

Genuflect is from Late Latin genuflectere, from Latin genu, "knee" + flectere, "to bend."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for genuflect

 

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