Relating to or characteristic of a feod; pertaining to feudal tenure or the feudal system of landholding.
From feod (fief) plus -al (relating to). This is an archaic variant of 'feudal,' using the older English spelling that reflected the Norman French pronunciation more directly.
When you see 'feodal' in old documents, you're reading English as spoken by Norman conquerors still processing their victory through French vocabulary. The shift from 'feodal' to 'feudal' shows how English gradually made foreign words more phonetically comfortable over centuries.
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