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ch rightfully attracts esteem, respect, or consideration; self-respect; dignity; courage; fidelity; especially, excellence of character; high moral worth; virtue; nobleness; specif., in men, integrity; uprightness; trustworthness; in women, purity; chastity. If she have forgot Honor and virtue. Shak. Godlike erect, wit…

To pave. [Poetic] Impaved with rude fidelity Of art mosaic. Wordsworth.

pecially of harmful ideas or principles; to imbue; as, to inoculate one with treason or infidelity.

of interest and affection; apprehensive regarding the motives of possible rivals, or the fidelity of friends; distrustful; having morbid fear of rivalry in love or preference given to another; painfully suspicious of the faithfulness of husband, wife, or lover. If the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealou…

inions and in conduct; fair representation of facts respecting merit or demerit; honesty; fidelity; impartiality; as, the justice of a description or of a judgment; historical justice.

igion and seriousness vanished all at once, and a spirit of liberty and libertinism, of infidelity and profaneness, started up in the room of it. Atterbury.

True to any person or persons to whom one owes fidelity, especially as a wife to her husband, lovers to each other, and friend to friend; constant; faithful to a cause or a principle. Your true and loyal wife. Shak. Unhappy both, but loyaltheir loves. Dryden.

The state or quality of being loyal; fidelity to a superior, or to duty, love, etc. He had such loyalty to the king as the law required. Clarendon. Not withstanding all the subtle bait With which those Amazons his love still craved, To his one love his loyalty he saved. Spenser.

n; a heeding or keeping with care; performance; -- usually with a sense of strictness and fidelity; as, the observance of the Sabbath is general; the strict observance of duties. It is a custom More honored in the breach than the observance. Shak.

The act of taking pains; carefulness and fidelity in performance. Beau. & Fl.

Something worthy of praise. [Obs.] Integrity, fidelity, and other gracious plausibilities. E. Vaughan.

Delusion; illusion; trick. [Obs.] The sophisms of infidelity, and the prestiges of imposture. Bp. Warburton.

Fidelity to nature or to real life; representation without idealization, and making no appeal to the imagination; adherence to the actual fact.

Strictness of fidelity in conforming to any practice, as if it were an enjoined rule of conduct. [R.] Those parts of pleading which in ancient times might perhaps be material, but at this time are become only mere styles and forms, are still continued with much religion. Sir M. Hale.

rm, pungent, bitterish taste. It is used in cookery, perfumery, etc., and is an emblem of fidelity or constancy. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Shak. Marsh rosemary. (a) A little shrub (Andromeda polifolia) growing in cold swamps and having leaves like those of the rosemary. (b) See under Marsh. -- Rosemary…

The quality of being secretive; fidelity to a secret; forbearance of disclosure or discovery. It is not with public as with private prayer; in this, rather secrecy is commanded than outward show. Hooker.

k company. (b) To put faith in; to accept as trustworthy; as, to take stock in a person's fidelity. [Slang] -- To take stock of, to take account of the stock of; to take an inventory of; hence, to ascertain the facts in regard to (something). [Eng.] At the outset of any inquiry it is proper to take stock of the results…

Belief; faith; fidelity. Bid her alight And hertroth plight. Shak.

Having fidelity pledged.

Of inflexible honesty and fidelity; -- a term derived from the true, or Coventry, blue, formerly celebrated for its unchanging color. See True blue, under Blue.