Loyal

How to spell loyal

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce loyal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does loyal mean?

1. adjectiveShowing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person, organisation, or cause.

Loyal in a sentence

• The company rewards loyal customers with an annual discount.

• He stayed loyal to the firm even when better offers arrived.

Where does loyal come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Old French loial, meaning 'faithful in carrying out legal obligations', which entered English in the 1500s. That French form descends from the Latin legalis, meaning 'lawful' or 'pertaining to law', built on the noun lex 'law'. The original sense centred on keeping faith with one's lawful duties, whether to a lord, a sovereign, or a contract, and it gradually broadened into the modern idea of steadfast personal devotion to a person, cause, or country. The very same Latin lex sits behind the more obviously legal English words 'legal' and 'legitimate', so loyal is essentially the softer, French-flavoured cousin of those terms. That shared ancestry explains the spelling: the 'oy' captures the way French reshaped the Latin vowel, which is why writers sometimes hesitate over whether it should be 'loy' or 'loi'.

How the word is built

• loy- (from Latin legalis: lawful, from lex 'law')
• -al (adjective suffix)