adherence

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The process or condition of adhering.
• noun Faithful attachment; devotion.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act or state of sticking or adhering: rare in a physical sense, adhesion being commonly used. Figuratively, the character of being fixed in attachment; fidelity; steady attachment: as, an adherence to a party or opinions; the act of holding to closely: as, a rigid adherence to rules.
• noun In Scots law, the return of a husband or wife who has for a time deserted his or her spouse.
• noun In painting, the effect of those parts of a picture which, wanting relief, are not detached, and hence appear adhering to the canvas or surface. Fairholt. In logic and metaphysics, the state of being adherent. See adherent, a., 3.
• noun In the theory of aggregates, the aggregate of all those points of a point-aggregate which are not limiting points (that is, limits of endless series of points): called the adherence of the point-aggregate; the aggregate of all the remaining points is called its coherence.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The quality or state of adhering.
• noun The state of being fixed in attachment; fidelity; steady attachment; adhesion.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A close physical union of two objects.
• noun Faithful support for some cause.
• noun medicine An extent to which a patient continues an agreed treatment plan.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the property of sticking together (as of glue and wood) or the joining of surfaces of different composition
• noun faithful support for a cause or political party or religion