loyalty

plural loyalties · alternative Scotland archaic lealty · alternative archaic loialty · alternative obsolete loyaltie

1. countableuncountableThe state of being loyal; fidelity.

   brand loyalty

2. countableuncountableFaithfulness or devotion to some person, cause or nation.

   He showed loyalty to his local football club after successive relegations.

   3 more examples

   Over the violence and the proud loyalties, over the sold-out-ness and the cruel indifference, there is light reclothing us in a kind of strange innocence.

   2007, Michael P. Knowles, The Folly of Preaching: Models and Methods

   The only responsibility and power of the Vice President under the Constitution is to faithfully count the electoral college votes as they have been cast. The Constitution does not empower the Vice President to alter in any way the votes that have been cast, either by rejecting certain of them or otherwise. How the Vice President discharges this constitutional obligation is not a question of his loyalty to the President any more than it would be a test of a President’s loyalty to his Vice President whether the President assented to the impeachment and prosecution of his Vice President for the commission of high crimes while in office. No President and no Vice President would—or should—consider either event as a test of political loyalty of one to the other. And if either did, he would have to accept that political loyalty must yield to constitutional obligation. Neither the President nor the Vice President has any higher loyalty than to the Constitution.

   2021 January 5, J. Michael Luttig, Twitter, archived from the original on 05 Jan 2021; republished as Washington Post, 5 January 2021

   One reason why many Asian countries oppose dual nationality is a belief that it can create divided loyalties among citizens, said Jelena Dzankic, co-director of the Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT), an international citizenship research network. […] Japan drafted its current nationality laws shortly after World War II, when many Japanese Americans were put in internment camps in the US; other dual citizens renounced their loyalty to the Japanese Emperor for their own safety, said Atsushi Kondo, a law professor at Japan’s Meijo University.

   2021 March 15, Jessie Yeung, “These Asian countries are giving dual citizens an ultimatum on nationality – and loyalty”, in CNN

   Synonyms: sympathy, fealty