- fidelity
- fidelity, allegiance, fealty, loyalty, devotion, piety denote faithfulness to something to which one is bound by a pledge or duty.Fidelity implies strict adherence to what is a matter of faith or of keeping faith; it presupposes an obligation, sometimes natural, sometimes imposed as a trust, and sometimes voluntarily accepted or chosen{
fidelity to one's word
}{fidelity in the performance of one's duties
}{fidelity to one's friends
}Sometimes, even when unqualified, it implies marital faithfulness{with close fidelity and love unfeigned to keep the matrimonial bond unstained— Cowper
}Sometimes it implies faithfulness to the original (as in representation, portrayal, or quotation){the Russian . . . finds relief to his sensitiveness in letting his perceptions have perfectly free play, and in recording their reports with perfect fidelity— Arnold
}Allegiance implies adherence to something objective which one serves or follows as a vassal follows his lord and which demands unswerving fidelity when conflicting obligations dispute its preeminence{secret societies that exact the allegiance of every member
}{but he [the critic] owes no allegiance to anything but to Truth; all other fidelities he must disregard when that is in question— L. P. Smith
}Fealty, like allegiance, implies a supreme obligation to be faithful, but unlike the latter it stresses the compelling power of one's sense of duty or of consciousness of one's pledged word{when I do forget the least of these unspeakable deserts, Romans, forget your fealty to me— Shak.
}{the extent to which we are accurate in our thoughts, words, and deeds is a rough measure of our fealty to truth— Ballard
}Loyalty may imply more emotion and closer personal attachment than either fidelity or fealty, it usually connotes steadfastness, sometimes in the face of attempts to alienate one's affections or of a temptation to ignore or renounce one's obligation{I will follow thee, to the last gasp, with truth and loyalty— Shak.
}but in some contexts it may be taken to imply no more than absence of anything treasonable or subversive{there are the loyalty programs . . . which undertake to exclude Communists and other disloyal persons from the government payrolls— Cushman
}Unlike fidelity, loyalty sometimes suggests a personal and emotional attachment often without rational basis{her chief offering, however, was a blind loyalty which stood every test, including the party's purge of her husband— Time
}{we can draw a portrait of Jesus that does not offend our rationalism, but it is done at the expense of our loyalty to the textual authority— Jung
}{indeed, in public life it is generally considered a kind of treachery to change, because people value what they call loyalty above truth— Benson
}Devotion stresses zeal in service often amounting to self-dedication; it usually also implies ardent attachment{he set out to prove the loyalty of his nature by devotion to the Queen who had advanced him— Belloc
}{there is . . . something outside of the artist to which he owes allegiance, a devotion to which he must surrender and sacrifice himself— T. S. Eliot
}Piety emphasizes fidelity to obligations regarded as natural or fundamental (as reverence for one's parents, one's race, one's traditions, one's country, or one's God) and observance of all the duties which such fidelity requires{filial piety inspires respect for the wishes of parents
}{religious piety is manifest in faithful and reverent worship
}{having matured in the surroundings and under the special conditions of sea life, I have a special piety toward that form of my past .... I have tried with an almost filial regard to render the vibration of life in the great world of waters— Conrad
}Analogous words: faithfulness, constancy, staunchness, steadfastness (see corresponding adjectives at FAITHFUL)Antonyms: faithlessness: perfidyContrasted words: falseness or falsity, disloyalty, treacherousness or treachery, traitorousness, perfidiousness (see corresponding adjectives at FAITHLESS)
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
