merit
Meanings
- A claim to commendation or a reward.
- A mark or token of approbation or to recognize excellence.
- Something deserving or worthy of positive recognition or reward.
- The sum of all the good deeds that a person does which determines the quality of the person's next state of existence and contributes to the person's growth towards enlightenment.
- Usually in the plural form the merits: the substantive rightness or wrongness of a legal argument, a lawsuit, etc., as opposed to technical matters such as the admissibility of evidence or points of legal procedure; (by extension) the overall good or bad quality, or rightness or wrongness, of some other thing.
- The quality or state of deserving retribution, whether reward or punishment.
- To deserve, to earn.
- To be deserving or worthy.
- To reward.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English merit, merite (“quality of person’s character or conduct deserving of reward or punishment; such reward or punishment; excellence, worthiness; benefit; right to be rewarded for spiritual service; retribution at doomsday; virtue through which Jesus Christ brings about salvation; virtue possessed by a holy person; power of a pagan deity”), from Anglo-Norman merit, merite, Old French merite (“moral worth, reward; merit”) (modern French mérite), from Latin meritum (“that which one deserves, deserts; benefit, reward, merit; service; kindness; importance, value, worth; blame, demerit, fault; grounds, reason”), neuter of meritus (“deserved, earned, obtained; due, proper, right; deserving, meritorious”), perfect passive participle of mereō (“to deserve, earn, obtain, merit; to earn a living”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mer- (“to allot, assign”). The English word is probably cognate with Ancient Greek μέρος (méros, “component, part; portion, share; destiny, fate, lot”) and cognate with Old Occitan merit.