Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A quality or characteristic deserving of blame or censure; a fault.
- n. Absence of merit.
- n. A mark made against one's record for a fault or for misconduct.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To deserve; merit; earn.
- To deserve to lose from lack of merit or desert.
- To be deserving; deserve.
- n. That which one merits; desert.
- To lower the merit of; discredit; depreciate.
- n. That which merits ill; censurable conduct; wrong-doing; ill desert: opposed to merit.
Wiktionary
- n. A quality of being inadequate; a fault; a disadvantage
- n. A mark given for bad conduct to a person attending an educational institution or serving in the army.
- v. transitive, archaic To deserve.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete That which one merits or deserves, either of good or ill; desert.
- n. That which deserves blame; ill desert; a fault; a vice; misconduct; -- the opposite of
merit . - n. The state of one who deserves ill.
- v. obsolete To deserve; -- said in reference to both praise and blame.
- v. rare To depreciate or cry down.
- v. To deserve praise or blame.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the quality of being inadequate or falling short of perfection
- n. a mark against a person for misconduct or failure; usually given in school or armed forces
Etymologies
- Middle English demerite, offense, from Old French desmerite, from Latin dēmeritum, from neuter past participle of dēmerēre, to deserve : dē-, de- + merēre, to earn; see (s)mer-2 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I never thought of this business of merit and demerit, which is able to change our lives in the twinkling of an eye, and which actually brought me down to a pretty low estate.”
“That which intimately comprises the nature of repentance is, sorrow on account of sin committed, and of its demerit, which is so much the deeper, as the acknowledgment of sin is clearer, and more copious.”
“But what had disturbed Jill even more than the demerit was the failure of the colleague present at her belittlement to speak a single word in her defense.”
“She told her managers she needed to go home because she was contagious, but Walmart informed her that she would get a "demerit" if she worked less than four hours.”
The Huffington Post: Taylor Leake: Walmart's Sick Day Policy Hurts Workers, Families, and Customers
“LOTHIAN: Ayers doesn't think their casual connection should be a-- quote -- "demerit" on Obama's record.”
“everlasting fire of hell" can only have been intended from all eternity for sin and demerit, that is, for neglect of Christian charity, in the same sense in which it is inflicted in time.”
“She told her managers she needed to go home because she was contagious, but Walmart informed her that she would get a "demerit" if she worked less than 4 hours.”
“Details - such as demerit points and fines - are being worked out.”
“I must be kept alive for the hanging, or else will the public be cheated, the law blackened, and a mark of demerit placed against the time-serving warden who runs this prison and one of whose duties is to see that his condemned ones are duly and properly hanged.”
“But that's the Catch 22 because if you dream, the dream images come up on the dream computer and then you, of course, are busted and it's back to work for you with a demerit.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘demerit’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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billy shakespeare's guide to good living
hurlyburly, nave, direful, whence, sooth, dwindle, tempest-tost, withal, selfsame, wrack, unfix, recompense and 142 more...
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collection
sanguine, vie, antebellum, glacial, treacly, iconoclast, lissom, anathema, serendipity, parsimonious, histrionic, contemptuous and 279 more...
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ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
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Words I like
demerit, fandango, scofflaw, penultimate, esoteric, auteur, abscond, kleptomaniac, gelatinous, element, august, brigade and 23 more...
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The Motorcycle Diaries
Che Guevara
vicissitude, pampas, precursor, solemnity, trajectory, Quixotic, roguish, solder, efficacy, rapport, acrid, circumscribe and 88 more...
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Against the Day
A list of strange and beforehand unknown words appearing in Thomas Pynchon's recent novel "Against the Day".
absquatulate, perilous, frontón, tow-colored, demerit, deftness, skylarking, reproof, hock shop, lurid, scarce, inexorably and 7 more...
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