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Definition of "nonobservance" [non•ob•serv•ance]

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

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "nonobservance" in a sentence
  • "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)."
  • "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."
  • "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."