meritorious
\mair-uh-TOR-ee-us\
DEFINITION
adjective
: worthy of reward, gratitude, honor, or esteem
EXAMPLES
Mrs. Goodman received the town's Meritorious Service Award for her untiring efforts to keep the library open.
DID YOU KNOW?
People who demonstrate meritorious behavior certainly "earn" our respect, and you can use that fact to remember that "meritorious" ultimately traces to the Latin verb "merēre," which means "to earn." Nowadays, the rewards earned for meritorious acts are likely to be of an immaterial nature: gratitude, admiration, praise, etc. But that wasn't always so. The history of "meritorious" recalls a reward more concrete in nature: money. The Latin word "meritorius," an ancestor of the English "meritorious," literally means "bringing in money.
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