treason
Definitions
General English
- noun the crime of betraying your country, by giving your country’s secrets to the enemy or by helping the enemy during wartime
Law
- noun a notifiable offence of betraying one’s country, usually by helping the enemy in time of war
Military
Politics
- noun the crime of betraying one’s country, usually by helping the enemy in time of war
Origin & History of “treason”
Treason and tradition are doublets – they have a common source. this was Latin trāditiō, a derivative of trādere ‘hand over, deliver’ (source also of English traitor). The notion of ‘handing something on to someone else’ lies behind tradition, but treason (acquired via Anglo-Norman treisoun) gets its meaning from the metaphorically extended Latin sense ‘hand over treacherously, betray’.
