Fidelity is faithfulness, or exactness in reproducing something. Marital fidelity, high fidelity, fidelity to the original.
The human sense is loyalty, usually to a person or a cause. The technical sense is how closely a copy matches its source, which is where hi-fi came from — high fidelity sound reproduces the recording with little added or lost.
1nounfidelityFaithfulness, or exactness in reproducing something.
“Their wedding vows included a promise of fidelity for as long as they lived.”
fidelity is a faithfulness.
Latin fidelitas comes from fidelis, faithful, from fides, faith. Fealty is the same word by another road.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeydʰ-
Middle English
fidelite
English, today
fidelity
Built from
From Middle English fidelite. From Late Middle English fidelite (“allegiance, fealty; faithfulness, trust; agreement made in good faith”), from Old French fidélité (“faithfulness, fidelity”) (modern French fidélité), from Latin fidēlitās (“faithfulness, fidelity”), from fidēlis (“dependable, trustworthy; faithful, loyal”) + -tās. Fidēlis is derived from fidēs (“belief, faith; confidence, trust; loyalty, fidelity; etc.”) (from Proto-Indo-European bʰidʰ-, the of bʰeydʰ- (“to convince; to trust”) (whence English bide)) + -ēlis (a variant of -ālis). a doublet of fealty.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA