disloyal

Middle English, from Anglo-Norman desleal, desloial

• (UK) IPA^(key): [dɪsˈlɔɪ(j)əɫ]

disloyal (comparative more disloyal, superlative most disloyal)

1. Not loyal, without loyalty.
   • 1536, Anne Boleyn, letter addressed to Henry VIII from the Tower of London, cited in Edward Herbert, The Life and Raigne of King Henry VIII, London: Thomas Whitaker, 1649, p. 383,

     Good your Grace, let not any light fancy, or bad Counsel of mine enemies withdraw your Princely favour from me; neither let that stain, that unworthy stain of a disloyall heart towards your good Grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most dutifull Wife, and the Infant Princesse your daughter […]

   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, Scene 2,

     […] Norway himself,

     With terrible numbers,

     Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

     The thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict;

   • 1923, Willa Cather, One of Ours, Book One, Chapter 15,

     He told his mother he was glad to be back again. He sometimes felt as if it were disloyal to her for him to be so happy with Mrs. Erlich.

   • 1998, William Maynard Hutchins (translator), “My Donkey and Hypocrisy” by Tawfiq al-Hakim, in In the Tavern of Life and Other Stories, Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, p. 65,

     Embarrassed about leaving him, I asked him to accompany me. It would have been disloyal to let him broil in the heat of Cairo, while I went off to a summer resort.

• faithless
• perfidious
• treacherous
• unfaithful
• unloyal

• disloyalty
• disloyally