Loyalty

How to spell loyalty

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce loyalty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does loyalty mean?

1. nounFirm and constant support for, or allegiance to, a person, group, cause, or organisation.

Loyalty in a sentence

• Years of loyalty to the company earned her a generous pension.

• The supermarket rewards customer loyalty with points on every purchase.

Where does loyalty come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Old French loial or leial, meaning 'faithful' or 'true to one's word', which itself descended from the Latin legalis, 'pertaining to the law', built on lex, lēgis, meaning 'law'. The earliest sense was tied to lawful and binding obligation: a loyal person was someone who held faithfully to legal and feudal duties, especially to a lord or sovereign. English borrowed loyal in the 1500s, and the abstract noun loyalty followed soon after to name the quality of remaining faithful. The very same Latin lex root sits inside 'legal', 'legitimate', and 'legislation', which is a useful reminder that the spelling carries an 'oy' from the French branch rather than the 'eg' of its Latin cousins. The trap for writers is the unstressed middle: it is loyal plus -ty, so the silent-feeling 'al' stays put before the suffix.

How the word is built

• loyal (faithful, true)
• -ty (noun-forming suffix denoting a quality or state)