Emeritus
adj, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A (male) person who is retired from active service or an occupation, especially one who retains an honorific version of a previous title.
"Martin Engels said: “I am not posted on dyke-bridges, but if it is a Dutch scheme there may be something in it. That engineer made a mistake by calling the city officials emerituses. He should not call people names if he wants the Municipal Council to build his twenty-four-million-dollar bridge. If the Tammany organization wants to build a dyke-bridge, I’m for it.”"
- 2 a professor or minister who is retired from assigned duties wordnet
- 3 An honorific version of a previous title. rare
"With a string of “emerituses” behind his name, last of which was acquired with the Welfare society resignation, [George Q.] Sheppard now lives in retirement in his home at The Hill, 722 King street."
- 1 Retired, but retaining an honorific version of a previous title. not-comparable, often, postpositional
"emeritus professor professor emeritus professors emeritae"
- 1 honorably retired from assigned duties and retaining your title along with the additional title ‘emeritus’ as in ‘professor emeritus’ wordnet
Example
More examples""I looked in vain for my chance, believing to find it in the trade; it closed the door in my face and put the key in its pocket", said the emeritus artist late Taleb Rabah in his song "The luck"."
Etymology
The adjective is a learned borrowing from Latin ēmeritus (“(having been) earned, (having been) merited; (having been) served, having done one’s service”), the perfect passive participle of ēmereō (“to earn, merit; to gain by service; (military) to complete one’s obligation to serve, to serve out one’s time”), from ex- (prefix meaning ‘away; out’) + mereō (“to deserve, merit; to acquire, earn, get, obtain; to render service to; to serve”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mer- (“to allot; to assign”)). The noun is derived from the adjective. The plural form emeriti is borrowed from Latin ēmeritī.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.