What is “Loyalty”

Loyalty is pledging your allegiance, devoting yourself to an individual or cause. Loyalty can
come in many different ways big or small they all mean the same. Not many people know what
the word actually means and that is where things can go wrong. Devoting yourself to a person
means that you will always back them up no matter the cause or time, some forget that being
loyal to someone or something takes pride and effort. You should never lose yourself while
being loyal to someone it does take a strong heart to be able to follow through with it.

Loyalty comes from the Old French word ‘loialté’ which translates to legal but that’s not what
being loyal is all about. The ending –té is a Latin-based noun-forming suffix, which shows up in
many other English words, such as royalty or safety. True loyalty doesn’t come from someone
who is legally forced to be true to your person. It’s about them willing to save time for you or do
something that comes from the true feelings of their heart. The Medieval Latin word was
‘legalities’. As time progressed the word transformed from being related to legal to having its
own meaning.

Furthermore, loyalty isn’t something that you can get from anyone, it is gained. For some people
loyalty isn’t that special because they never had anyone truly loyal to them, loyalty isn’t
something that can be faked. Faking loyalty is what we call grimy; disrespectful and rude.
Loyalty today is not talked about regularly, it is rare to find someone that will be loyal to you
because so many people have been mentally and/or physically hurt by others. Loyalty isn’t hard
to recognize, but it is hard to find.

Examples of loyalty are; sticking up for your friends when you see others talking behind their
back. When you partner sticks with you through thick and thin that is loyalty. If your friend
saves you food or buys you your own plate when everyone else ate and didn’t save you anything
that is loyalty. Loyalty can be when a customer only goes to a specific store to buy their needs or
wants. When your friends want you to succeed in life and only want good things to happen to
you and sometimes help you to get those good things that is also loyalty.

My personal example of loyalty is that my boyfriend always brings me flowers every Saturday
and always makes sure I am mentally and physically fine. He always wants the best for me and
never argues or lies to me when he needs to tell me something. Another example is that my best
friend always has my back no matter what. Even though we’ve only known each other for 4
years I feel like I can call her my sister after everything we have been through. My last example
is my mom never lets anything get to me she always protects me from anything harmful she
always backs me up in any argument I have with anyone.
Loyalty has dramatically changes over time. Loyalty used to only be used when people were in
the military and had to swear their loyalty to protect everyone in the army and their fellow
citizens. Now a days loyalty is represented when someone or yourself is always true to them or
yourself. Loyalty is used all over the world in Europe they define the word as legal buy in the
U.S. we define it as devotion or being true. Loyalty in present time is used very lightly not many
people shoe it these days which shows how much it has changes over the years.

In conclusion, loyalty can be shown numerous ways by many people. It has drastically changed
over the years and how people actually show it. There are not many people in this world that
know the true meaning of loyalty but that is where we the people that do know need to help show
them what true loyalty is. Loyalty is a beautiful thing to give to someone and can carry you to
many beneficial places.