Other forms: lieges
A liege is a lord owed loyalty, or the vassal who owes it. My liege, his liege lord, the liege's men.
The word points both ways, which is the interesting thing about it: the same term names the lord and the sworn follower, because the bond ran in both directions and each owed the other. My liege as an address survives only in historical drama.
1nounliegeA lord owed loyalty, or the vassal who owes it.
“The knight knelt before his liege and swore to serve him until death.”
liege is a lord or vassal.
Old French liege comes through Frankish from a Germanic root meaning free. A liege man was free but sworn.
Proto-Germanic
*liþugaz — flexible, free, unoccupied
Middle High German
ledic
Old French
liege — liege, free
Anglo-Norman
lige
Middle English
liege
English, today
liege
Built from
From Middle English liege, lege, lige, from Anglo-Norman lige, from Old French liege (“liege, free”), from Middle High German ledic, ledec (“free, empty, vacant”) (Modern German ledig (“unmarried”)) from Proto-Germanic liþugaz (“flexible, free, unoccupied”). Akin to Old Frisian leþeg, leþoch (“free”), Old English liþiġ (“flexible”), Old Norse liðugr (“free, unhindered”), Old Saxon lethig (“idle”), Low German leddig (“empty”), Middle Dutch ledich (“idle, unemployed”) (Dutch ledig (“empty”) and leeg (“empty”)), Middle English lethi (“unoccupied, at leisure”). An alternate etymology traces the Old French - word to Latin laeticus (“of or relating to a semifree colonist in Gaul”), from Latin laetus (“a semi-free colonist”), from Gothic 𐌻𐌴𐍄𐍃 (attested in derivatives such as 𐍆𐍂𐌰𐌻𐌴𐍄𐍃), from Proto-Germanic lētaz (“freeman; bondsman, serf”), from lētaną (“to let; free; release”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA