From the good folks at Merriam-Webster: To be called a patriot is today considered an honor, but it wasn’t always this way. For much of the 17th century, to be deemed a “good patriot” was to be a lover of one’s country who agreed on political and/or religious matters with whoever was doing the deeming. British loyalists applied the word like a badge to supporters of the ruling monarchy, but then the word took on negative connotations as it was applied first to hypocritical patriots—those who espoused loyalty to the Crown but whose actions said otherwise, and then to outright anti-royalists. But in the 18th century, American writers, including Benjamin Franklin, embraced patriot to refer to colonists who took action against British control. After the American Revolutionary War, patriot settled back into more neutral use, but to this day writers of all and various political stripes grapple over who is deserving of the word.