Feudal

How to spell feudal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce feudal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does feudal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the medieval system in which land was held in exchange for service and loyalty to a lord.

Feudal in a sentence

• The history lecture covered how the feudal system organised land and labour.

• Under feudal law, a tenant owed military service to the lord who granted the estate.

Where does feudal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Medieval Latin feudalis, meaning 'relating to a fief', built on the noun feudum, which described an estate of land granted to a vassal in return for loyalty and military service. The Latin feudum is widely thought to be of Germanic origin, linked to a root meaning 'cattle' or 'property' (compare the old word for movable wealth that also gives us 'fee'), since livestock and land were the original measures of held wealth. English adopted 'feudal' in the early 1600s, when scholars and lawyers were looking back at the medieval system of land tenure and needed a name for it. The 'eu' spelling, which trips up modern writers, comes straight from that Latin feudum and is the same vowel cluster seen in its close cousin 'feoffment', an old legal term for granting land. Note that despite sharing letters, 'feudal' is unrelated to 'feud' meaning a long quarrel, which arrived separately from a Germanic word for hostility.

How the word is built

• feud- (from feudum: a fief, land held in return for service)
• -al (adjective suffix: relating to)