It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 25th.
Today's word is fealty, spelled F-E-A-L-T-Y.
Fealty is a noun.
It's an old-fashioned and somewhat literary word that refers to intense loyalty or fidelity to a person,
group, etc. More narrowly, fealty refers to the fidelity of a vassal or feudal tenant to their lord.
Here's the word used in a sentence from The Washington Post by Anne Hornaday.
director Denis Villeneuve's Dune movies deserve admiration if only for their fealty and ambition.
The filmmaker's respect for Herbert's source material radiates from every frame of movies that feel as massive
as they are minutely orchestrated.
In The Use of Law, published posthumously in 1629, Francis Bacon wrote,
fealty is to take an oath upon a book that he will be a faithful tenant to the king.
That's a pretty accurate summary of the early meaning of the word fealty.
Early forms of the term were used in Middle English in the early 14th century when they specifically designated the loyalty of a vassal to a lord.
Eventually the meaning of the word broadened.
Fealty can be paid to a country, a principal, or a leader of any kind,
though the synonyms, fidelity, and loyalty are more commonly used.
Field T comes from the Anglo-French word Felté,
which comes from the Latin noun Fidelitas, meaning Fidelity.
These words come ultimately from Fides, the Latin word for faith.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.