Definition of "reverential"

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.

1867, Edward William Cox, The Arts of Writing, Reading and Speaking, page 155

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."

2012, Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic, University of Michigan Press, page 94