Fidelity

Origin

15th century, from Middle French fidélité, from Latin fidēlitās, from fidēlis ("faithful"), from fidēs ("faith, loyalty") (English faith), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰidʰ-, zero-grade of Proto-Indo-European *bʰeydʰ- ("to command, to persuade, to trust") (English bide).

Full definition of fidelity

Noun

1. Faithfulness to one's duties.the fidelity of the civil servants
2. Loyalty to one's spouse or partner, including abstention from extramarital affairs (except in an open marriage).
3. Accuracy, or exact correspondence to some given quality or fact.
4. The degree to which a system accurately reproduces an input.
• 2003, Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth International Conference on Very Large Databases, Berlin, Germany, 9-12 September, 2003, page 58:By placing them closer to the source, we can reduce the number of messages in the system and this in turn is likely to improve the fidelity of the system.

Derived terms

• fidelitous
• fidelity bond
• high fidelity

Related terms

• affidavit
• bide
• faith

Antonyms

• infidelity