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traitorous

UK/ˈtɹeɪtəɹəs/US/ˈtɹeɪtəɹəs/
adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,826 of 15,258neutral

Traitorous means turning against the country or cause you swore loyalty to. Traitorous conduct, a traitorous act, denounced as traitorous.

It is one of the heaviest charges in the language and is thrown about far more loosely than it should be, particularly in politics, where disagreeing with a government is not traitorous. The Latin behind it means one who hands something over.

Definitions of traitorous

  1. 1adjectivetraitorousTurning against the country or cause you swore loyalty to.C1

    “The general's traitorous plan to hand the city to the enemy was discovered just in time.”

traitorous is a quality.

Where it comes from

Old French traitre comes from Latin traditor, one who hands over, from tradere, to deliver up.

  1. Old French

    traitros

  2. Anglo-Norman

    traiterous

  3. Middle English

    trayterous

  4. English, today

    traitorous

From Middle English trayterous, traytrous, (also Middle English traytours, treytours), from Anglo-Norman traiterous, traitourous and Old French traitros.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

traitorous in the wild

  • The traitorous eight was a group of eight employees who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 to found Fairchild Semiconductor.

    Traitorous eight

  • Victor Henry Grinich was a pioneer in the semiconductor industry and a member of the "traitorous eight" that founded Fairchild Semiconductor in Silicon Valley.

    Victor Grinich

  • The 1775 proclamation of rebellion also encouraged subjects throughout the empire, including those in Britain, to report anyone carrying on "traitorous correspondence" with the rebels to be punished.

    Proclamation of Rebellion

  • Godfrey was a traitor to Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, and thus the marriage was considered traitorous.

    Frederick of Tuscany

  • One branch of the Nie family who were descendants of the traitorous Nie Yi changed their surname to Zhang to avoid being associated with him.

    Nie (surname)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.