Ligeance

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The duty of loyalty and faithful obedience that a subject owes to a sovereign or feudal lord
2. An archaic term for the bond of allegiance tying a person to their ruler or superior
3. Faithful allegiance owed by a vassal or subject to the crown or a liege lord

Etymology: "Ligeance" is an older form of "allegiance," and it shows the word's skeleton plainly: it is built from "liege," the feudal term for a lord to whom loyalty is owed, plus the suffix "-ance," which turns a verb or adjective into a noun for a state or quality. Medieval English borrowed it from Old French, where "ligeance," "legeance," and "ligance" all circulated as spelling variants of the same idea. Its rival forms tell the story of how the word changed. The "al-" prefix that now dominates in "allegiance" was added later, under the influence of the Latin prefix "ad-," and it eventually pushed the older spelling out of common use. "Ligeance" survives today mainly in discussions of medieval history and in historical writing that preserves the older spelling.