Quote Originally Posted by Gentleman Doli View Post
The term "fee" of "fief" which is the basic root of the word "feudal" derived from an ancient Gothic source faihu signifying simply "property" which in its most basic sense was "cattle".[2] This can be compared to the very ancient classical Latin word pecunia, which means both cattle and money. Many primitive societies in existence today demonstrate the ancient use of cattle as financial currency, for example the Masai of Kenya, who still pay dowries in this form. Because feudalism was in its origin a Teutonic or Gothic system from northern Europe untouched by Roman civilization, it did not exist in ancient Rome, where the nearest equivalent was clientelism. No classical Latin word therefore exists to signify it, and a new Low-Latin word feodum was invented by mediaeval European scribes to use in their Latinised charters and other writings.[3][4]
The term feudalism is recent, first appearing in French in 1823, Italian in 1827, English in 1839, and in German in the second half of the nineteenth century.[14] It derived from "feodal" which was used in seventeenth-century French legal treatises (1614)[15][16] and translated into English legal treatises as "feodal government". In the 18th century Adam Smith popularized the forms "feudal government" and "feudal system" in his book Wealth of Nations (1776).[14] In the 19th century the adjective "feudal" (i.e. "the feudal government") evolved into a noun: feudalism.[14]