Word of the Day : June 17, 2018

meritorious \mair-uh-TOR-ee-us\ adjective

Definition

: deserving of honor or esteem

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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Aired June 17, 2018

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