the.com/merit
The thing everyone claims to want rewarded, right after their own exception is made.
means The quality of actually deserving credit, reward, or praise based on your own ability or effort — not who you know or how loud you ask.
from From Latin meritum, 'that which is deserved,' tied to merere, 'to earn or deserve' — the verb used for soldiers earning their pay. It traveled through Old French merite into English, keeping its core accounting-ledger sense intact: value you've actually earned, not value you've merely claimed.
- origin
- from latin mereri, to earn or deserve
- paradox
- hardest to judge fairly, easiest to claim unfairly
- myth
- pure meritocracy requires equal starting lines nobody has
- office use
- cited most by whoever just got promoted