A characteristic that I admire in people is loyalty. I was surprised tonight when I looked it up and found that it comes from Old French (loial, leal) and Latin (legalum) words meaning "faithful or law-abiding." I suppose it makes sense in that you are faithful in carrying out your legal obligations. Still, it's so much more broad than that. You can be loyal to your friends or your work or your family, which isn't being legally faithful. I wonder when it began to change. I tried looking it up in the OED, but I couldn't get in again tonight.