reverential

adj

1. Showing or characterized by reverence; respectful.

   “The supposed religious tone must be banished, so far as it is applied to the book itself or to the words printed in it; but there is a reverential tone, properly applicable to the meaning conveyed by the words, which should be cultivated.”

   “The reverential tone intensified as this section progressed. When each spectator had purportedly become her mother, she was invited to share her mother's wisdom, prefaced by the words "I always said."”

noun

1. Someone or something that is reverential.

   “But that eccleſiaſtical authority can exiſt (perhaps as far as it ought) without the exerciſe of civil power, we have a proof in this ſect; the degrees of whoſe prieſthood (which are as numerous I believe as in any prieſthood, conſiſting of provincial biſhops, metropolitans (or what amounts to the meaning), deacons, preſbyters, and every order of reverentials) poſſeſs, it ſeems, each one within the circle of their connection, its proper influence, fully and undiſputedly.”

   “The verb is not thereby made reflective, but preserves the same signification as if not reverential. The intransitive reverentials are said to be formed from their compulsive form, and the active from their applicative.”

   “While reverentials wait / The triumph of His cosmic plan, / The Christ reclaims his millions in this martyrdom of man.”