Word Finder - merits

definition

A claim to commendation or a reward.

definition

A mark or token of approbation or to recognize excellence.

example

For her good performance in the examination, her teacher gave her ten merits.

definition

Something deserving or worthy of positive recognition or reward.

example

His reward for his merit was a check for $50.

synonyms

• excellence
• value
• worth

definition

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.

example

to acquire or make merit

definition

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.

example

Even though the plaintiff was ordered by the judge to pay some costs for not having followed the correct procedure, she won the case on the merits.

definition

The quality or state of deserving retribution, whether reward or punishment.

definition

To deserve, to earn.

example

Her performance merited wild applause.

definition

To be deserving or worthy.

example

They were punished as they merited.

definition

To reward.

Two of his merits seem to have impressed the ancients themselves.

Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not be denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent terms with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant career before him and an assured position in society.

The work has merits, but has never been officially approved.

Most of the native Sapiums have been destroyed by reckless tapping, and the merits of this genus have been somewhat overlooked and deserve reinvestigation.

But if sold upon its own merits, pointed fox is a durable fur.

Doppet, the next commander, was little better fitted for the task; but his successor, Dugommier, was a brave and experienced soldier who appreciated the merits of Bonaparte.

Apart from its intrinsic merits as a learned and valuable addition to classification, this work is interesting in the history of ornithology because of the wholesale changes of nomenclature it introduced as the result of much diligence and zeal in the application of the strict rule of priority to the names of birds.

Those who take up such an extreme position regarding his merits have known too little of the state of contemporary science, and have limited their comparison to the works of the scholastic theologians.

Spohr, however, promptly discovered its merits, and produced it at Cassel some months later, with very favourable results.

The map of Marinus and the descriptive accounts which accompanied it have perished, but we learn sufficient concerning them from Ptolemy to be able to appreciate their merits and demerits.

Unfortunately politics were inextricably interwoven with the religious controversies of the time, and resistance to English influence involved resistance to the activities of the reformers in the church, whose ultimate victory has obscured the cardinal's genuine merits as a statesman.

It has high merits of style, being lucid and pointed to a degree.

The government adopted this proposal, and laid down as a principle that it would guarantee the gross receipts per kilometre of guaranteed railways, such gross receipts to be settled for each railway on its own merits.

They decided each problem on its merits, looking more to the spirit than to the letter, and often showing a practical sagacity worthy of Johnson himself.

By direction of Talleyrand, then minister for foreign affairs, the French commissary repaired in state to the old man's residence in Turin, to congratulate him on the merits of his son, whom they declared "to have done honour to mankind by his genius, and whom Piedmont was proud to have produced, and France to possess."

It is indeed by no means easy to distinguish and apportion the respective merits of the competitors.

This criticism is not applicable to his works on antiquarian subjects, and his edition of Benedetto Accolti's De bello a Christianis contra barbaros (1623) has great merits.

In Greyfriars' churchyard the Solemn League and Covenant was signed, and among its many monuments are the Martyrs' monument, recording the merits of the murdered covenanters, and the tomb of " Bluidy " Mackenzie.

All these measures were important and were carefully drawn; but their merits cannot be explained in a biographical notice.

Its poetic merits are few, and its historical accuracy is easily impugned.

Murimuth has no merits of style, and gives a bald narrative of events.

Of a more general character, and combining the merits of the above schools, are the works of the authors who constituted the socalled "Debreczen Class," which boasts the names of the naturalist and philologist John Foldi, compiler of a considerable part of the Debreczeni magyar grammatica; Michael Fazekas, author of Ludas Matyi (Vienna, 1817), an epic poem, in 4 cantos; and Joseph Kovacs.

It is one of Darwin's great merits to have made use of these observations and to have formulated their results to a large extent as the laws of variation and heredity.

The last-named work, though lacking in original power and clearness of judgment, is extremely convenient and useful, and has had an influence perhaps disproportionate to its real exegetical merits.

His merits as an author are often judged solely by his Constitutional History.

Concerning the date of his birth and his parentage nothing definite is known, but as he ascribes his position at court to the merits of his parents they were probably people of some importance.

It is enough to say that on this fantastic basis Helmont constructed a medical system which had some practical merits, that his therapeutical methods were mild and in many respects happy, and that he did service by applying newer chemical methods to the preparation of drugs.

Its merits were recognized by Descartes, among the first, nine years after its publication.

His character and career have been made the subject of eulogies much beyond their merits.

The peculiar merits of the Venetian manufacture are the elegance of form and the surprising lightness and thinness of the substance of the vessels produced.

It is written for two choirs, the one of five and the other of four voices, and has obtained a celebrity which, if not entirely factitious, is certainly not due to its intrinsic merits alone.

Corona, and the cathedral, and several pictures also in the picture gallery; while his son Benedetto had greater merits as an engraver than a painter.

Apart from this his chief merits lie in his studies on the subject of the traditional authorities, the results of which are given by Ibn Sa`d, and in his chronology, which is often excellent.

Though Porta's merits were undoubtedly great, he did not invent or improve the camera obscura.

As a traveller and observer his merits are conspicuous.

In architectural merits its monuments, though not so extensive, are worthy of comparison with those of Granada.

Instead of discoursing on the corporate conscience of the state and the endowments of the Church, the importance of Christian education, and the theological unfitness of the Jews to sit in parliament, he is solving business-like problems about foreign tariffs and the exportation of machinery; waxing eloquent over the regulation of railways, and a graduated tax on corn; subtle on the monetary merits of half-farthings, and great in the mysterious lore of quassia and cocculus indicus.

There is a radical difference between the points of view of the Japanese and the Western connoisseur in estimating tbe Japanese merits of sculpture in metal.

Directing his efforts at first to reproducing the deep green and straw-yellow glazes of China, he had exhausted almost his entire resources before success came, and even then the public was slow to recognize the merits of his ware.

But for this he would hardly have established so absolute an antithesis between industrial and military competition, and have shown himself readier to recognize that the law of the struggle for existence, just because it is universal and equally (though differently) operative in every form of society, cannot be appealed to for guidance in deciding between the respective merits of an industrial or military and of an individualist or socialist organization of society.

One of the many merits of the antiquary Lami was his connexion with the Novelle letterarie (1740-1770), founded by him, and after the first two years almost entirely written by him.

From Sir Walter Scott downwards the tendency to judge literary work on its own merits to a great extent restored Defoe to his proper place, or, to speak more correctly, set him there for the first time.

One of his great merits is that he was the first to dissociate medicine from priestcraft, and to direct exclusive attention to the natural history of disease.

For most of the period in question Thucydides is the only source; and despite the inherent merits of a great writer, it can hardly be doubted that the tribute of almost unqualified praise that successive generations of scholars have paid to Thucydides must have been in some measure qualified if, for example, a Spartan account of the Peloponnesian War had been preserved to us.

He published an edition of it and called attention to its merits in a special preface.

Here the recension in 1 Esdras especially merits attention for its text, literary structure and for its variant traditions.

In Oxford he was allowed to hold a disputation with some learned doctors on the rival merits of the Copernican and so-called Aristotelian systems of the universe, and, according to his own report, had an easy victory.

He was at last persuaded to accept the military command in Aragon, which he thought below his merits.

In the first example, which was erected on the quay at Newcastle in 1846, the necessary pressure was obtained from the ordinary water mains of the town; but the merits and advantages of the device soon became widely appreciated, and a demand arose for the erection of cranes in positions where the pressure afforded by the mains was insufficient.

But whatever merits they had as clarifiers of turbid water, the advent of bacteriology, and the recognition of the fact that the bacteria of certain diseases may be water-borne, introduced a new criterion of effectiveness, and it was perceived that the removal of solid particles, or even of organic impurities (which were realized to be important not so much because they are dangerous to health per se as because their presence affords grounds for suspecting that the water in which they occur has been exposed to circumstances permitting contamination with infective disease), was not sufficient; the filter must also prevent the passage of pathogenic organisms, and so render the water sterile bacteriologically.