625: feudalism Aug 24, 2016

It makes sense that economic systems would be named after what is important within the ideology; 'capitalism' comes from 'capital' which is simple personal financial wealth, and 'communism' is founded around the idea of commonly shared wealth and power. Feudalism, in the way we understand feuds, does not relate to the root in meaning. 'Feudal' comes from the Latin 'feudum', a form which in Medieval Latin gave English 'fee'. Related as well are the words 'fief', both the person and the plot of land, as well as 'feu', a fixed rent. So while such usages like that in Family Feud, may seem distant from a system of localized hierarchical land renting and ownership, the words were in another, separate way, connected.