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fidelity

Noun
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Loyalty and faithfulness, especially in relationships or bonds; in poetry, it is a virtue, a source of conflict, and a theme in love poetry, exploring the strength or strain of commitment.

Detailed Definition
The dog’s “fidelity” is the one form of devotion the speaker expects to survive death. Hardy uses the abstract noun to contrast human indifference with animal loyalty, then undercuts the expectation with comic irony.
Example
Example in poetry:
Wordsworth asks, “What feeling do we ever find / To equal among human kind / A dog’s fidelity?”; Shakespeare’s “fidelity” often denotes constancy in love and service; “The old dog kept fidelity beside the hospital door” personifies loyal waiting; A speaker may test fidelity when “the promised friend / did not return with spring”
Additional Notes
The word in “A dog's fidelity!” is less everyday than common synonyms like loyalty, so some readers may pause over its more formal sense.; Found in the poem, Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave? by Thomas Hardy
Also Known As
loyalty faithfulness devotion allegiance constancy
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