Allegeaunce

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The duty of loyalty and faithful service a subject owes to a lord, ruler or sovereign
2. Obligation of fidelity that a vassal or subject historically bore toward a feudal lord or monarch
3. Faithful devotion and duty owed by a person to a superior such as a king or feudal master

Etymology: "Allegeaunce" is an obsolete spelling of "allegeance," a Middle English word meaning loyalty owed to a lord, and it came into English from Old French "alegeance." The Old French form is itself a variant of "alegiance," the ancestor of the modern "allegiance," so the spellings are sister forms of one word rather than a sequence of changes. The root idea is one of binding oneself to another. Old French "lige" described a man bound by feudal ties to a particular lord, and the "al-" prefix, from Latin "ad," carries the sense of directing toward, giving the whole word the flavour of pledging oneself to someone. In medieval England, where the feudal system made such pledges central to social life, the term named the duty a vassal swore to his overlord.