What is "deferential"

Usage examples of "deferential".

Seers - half of them men, half of them women, all of them greyly deferential - and, bringing up the rear, the gangly, smiling form of Paggs Yurnvic, a Seer whom Fassin had helped teach but who, having spent less time subsequently in the slowness of actual delving than Fassin had, was now older in both adjusted time and appearance.

Custom dictated that he should kneel and return the salutation because they were equals or near equals but he could not understand why there should be such unbelievable deferential ceremony in a situation like this where blood was going to flow.

They were amazed, not to say scared, and as though by tacit consent they gathered together, thanked Mr Hawke for his sermon, said good-night in a humble deferential manner to Badcock and the other Simeonites, and left the room together.

Longstaff was observed to speak was an elderly man of foreign aspect who approached him occasionally in the most deferential manner, and whom Agatha Gosling supposed to be his servant.

It was properly deferential and volunteered no cybermetaphysical nonsense about higher intelligences or the state of the universe.

In Emberen she was just Khyber to everyone she knew, not Princess or Highness or some other deferential term.

The Yale boys and the other lawyers were polite and deferential, mainly because of his friendship with Clay, but he was only a paralegal.

Even sitting in the pretty breakfast-room filled with early summer flowers, and being waited on by a deferential Armstrong was not such an ordeal as she might have supposed.

Manners were deferential, even in cases where the Argos representative was offered rudeness in return.

The Captain was flatteringly deferential so Killashandra nodded as he made his points, and frowned wisely at the print-out as if she knew what she was seeing Fortunately the bridge was buffered against crystal noise as the rest of the ship was not, giving her a respite from the sound.

He accorded her a deferential bow, and then, as the men guided Carrik past, he followed them down the corridor.

That evening, at the dinner table, she'd observed Alan in the company of his parents, seeing how, in the weeks since his arrival at Lake Skaneateles, he has become politely deferential to doctor Savage: wouldn't be drawn into an exchange when doctor Savage wittily denounced the Abstract Expressionists, murmured only a few words in defense of other artists with whom, in doctor Savage's eyes, Alan is associated.

I lay there, breathing in his aroma of rifle-oil and cow-dung, wondering what the harvest might be, and Willem walked ahead with Franz-Josef, making deferential noises of gratitude and apology, and to my astonishment making his majesty laugh - say that for the Starnbergs, they could charm birds from the trees when they wanted to, and by the time we reached the lodge the Emperor of Austria was positively jocose, issuing orders to flying minions, and not going off to change his ghastly breeks until he had seen me installed on a couch in a gun-room, with servitors rallying round with hot water and cold compresses, and Willem chivvying them aside while he attended to my bandages himself.

But what he did not know was that the deferential expression on the faces of these capable, enterprising, seasoned young men was the outcome not merely of respect for his rank but of something resembling awe of his reputation in the service: in his fourteen-gun brig the Sophie he had taken the thirty-two-gun Spanish Cacafuego.

I guess his appearance helped, for he was nothing like the job at all, being a five-foot butterball with a beaming baby face behind a mighty moustache, innocent blue eyes, bald head, and frightful whiskers a foot long, chattering nineteen to the dozen (in several languages), gushing gallantly at the womenfolk, nosing up to the elbows of the men like a deferential gun dog, chuckling at every joke, first with all the gossip (so long as it didn't matter), a prime favourite at every Paris party and reception - and never missing a word or a look or a gesture, all of it grist to his astounding memory.