Word.ws English Dictionary

anticipatory obedience

anticipatory obedience noun: a situation where one attempts to predict expectations others (particularly superiors) have, without explicit communication, and to fulfill (or exceed) those expectations.

Noun

anticipatory obedience (uncountable)

  1. A situation where one attempts to predict expectations others (particularly superiors) have, without explicit communication, and to fulfill (or exceed) those expectations.
    • [The members of the political bureaucracy] displayed what can be described as “preemptive obedience”, the anticipation of what they considered to be their bosses’ wishes and whims. It was an anticipatory obedience encouraged by their superiors and characterized favorably as “vigilance.” The rule of...1993 February, Seweryn Bialer, “The mature Stalinist system” (chapter 4.4), in Ralph Young, Chris Binns, Martin Burch, Douglas Jaenicke, Michael Moran, editors, Introducing Government: A Reader...
    • Regional functionaries were also motivated to work “towards their superiors” and diligently carried out their duties with what Germans refer to as “anticipatory obedience.” Once Nazi leaders officially sanctioned the murder of Jews as a “solution,” their subordinates in the field planned and...2002 January 1, Wendy Lower, “Anticipatory Obedience” and the Nazi Implementation of the Holocaust in the Ukraine: A Case Study of Central and Peripheral Forces in the Generalbezirk Zhytomyr...

Examples of anticipatory obedience in a sentence

  • It was an anticipatory obedience encouraged by their superiors and characterized favorably as “vigilance.” The rule of terror […]1993 February, Seweryn Bialer, “The mature Stalinist system” (chapter 4.4), in Ralph Young, Chris Binns, Martin Burch, Douglas Jaenicke...
  • In fact, there need not be any real pressure at all, for in anticipatory obedience many people try to execute what they think the authority wants from them.2006 September, Uwe Steinhoff, “Why there is no Barbarization but a Lot of Barbarity in Warfare” (chapter 6), in George Kassimeris, editor...
  • After the German elections of 1932 […] or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience.Snyder, Timothy (2017), On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, New York: Crown, page 18

Origin of anticipatory obedience

Semantic calque of German vorauseilender Gehorsam (literally “running ahead/in front of obediently”). Constructed from anticipatory + obedience.

Questions about anticipatory obedience

What does anticipatory obedience mean?
Anticipatory obedience means a situation where one attempts to predict expectations others (particularly superiors) have, without explicit communication, and to fulfill (or exceed) those expectations.
How do you use anticipatory obedience in a sentence?
It was an anticipatory obedience encouraged by their superiors and characterized favorably as “vigilance.” The rule of terror […]
What part of speech is anticipatory obedience?
Anticipatory obedience is a noun.

Words near anticipatory obedience in the dictionary

  1. anticipatory bail
  2. anticipatory breach
  3. anticipatory breaches
  4. anticipatory it
  5. anticipatory its
  6. anticipatory obedience
  7. anticipatory paging
  8. anticipatory repudiation
  9. anticipatory repudiations
  10. anticipatory retaliation
  11. anticipointment

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: anticipatory obedience (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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