Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Failure or refusal to observe, as a religious custom or holiday.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Neglect or failure to observe or fulfil.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Neglect or failure to observe or fulfill.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The failure to observe a custom, or to conform with a law

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a lack of conformity with law or custom or practice etc.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Second, however, the chart hints at two periods when youthful disaffection accelerated—the 1960s (only the latter part of which is visible through this window) and the 1990s and early 2000s, separated by more than a quarter century of relatively little change between 1971 (13 percent nonobservance) and 1997 (15 percent nonobservance).

    American Grace Robert D. Putnam 2010

  • He quotes an Israeli physician who claims that Jewish women suffer less from cancer of the cervix and attributes possible genito-urinary tract complications to nonobservance.

    Female Purity (Niddah) Annotated Bibliography. leBeit Yoreh 2009

  • From what I've been able to discern in the past year or two, going to all these events, the dominant concern among the Jewish generation in power seems to be that young people aren't participating enough in Jewish life, and through apathy, intermarriage, nonobservance, the Jews are going to wither and disappear.

    Scott Thill: Is This The End Of The Jews? An Interview With Adam Mansbach 2008

  • Pamela must not expect that my imperfections will be a plea for her nonobservance of my lessons, as you call them; for, I doubt I shall never be half so perfect as you; and so I cannot permit you to recede in your goodness, though I may find myself unable to advance as I ought in my duty.

    Pamela 2006

  • Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince* legitimate reasons to excuse this nonobservance.

    Dawg's Blawg 2006

  • Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince* legitimate reasons to excuse this nonobservance.

    Archive 2006-02-01 2006

  • The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

    War and Peace 2003

  • And therefore a good Captain, among his other orders, ought to arrange who those should be who have to take up his voice [commands] and transmit them to others, and he should accustom his soldiers not to believe anything except those of his Heads, and those Heads of his to say nothing except what he commissions them to; it has often been seen that the nonobservance of this rule has caused the greatest misfortunes.

    Discourses 2003

  • The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by her confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered in by our nonobservance of the regular custom of the schoolroom.

    The Turn of the Screw 2003

  • The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of

    War and Peace 2003

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