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demerit

/dɪˈmɛɹɪt/noun

demerit is a noun meaning “A quality of being inadequate; a disadvantage, a fault” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-E-M-E-R-I-T and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 5 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of demerit is demerits.

What does demerit mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A quality of being inadequate; a disadvantage, a fault.

  2. 2

    A mark given for bad conduct to a person attending an educational institution or serving in the army.

    A few of you have followed in the path of the perfect West Point graduate, Robert E. Lee, who never received a single demerit in four years. Some of you followed in the path of the imperfect graduate, Ulysses S. Grant, who had his fair shar

  3. 3

    That which one merits or deserves, either of good or ill; desert.

verb

  1. 1

    archaicTo deserve.

  2. 2

    archaicTo depreciate or cry down.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce demerit?

  • /dɪˈmɛɹɪt/

Demerit has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-demerit.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of demerit

  • demerits plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • demeriting participle, present
  • demerited participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is demerit?

Demerit appears about once in every 5 million words in written English, the 63,645th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Demerit in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchdémérite (quality of being inadequate), blâme (mark for bad conduct)
GermanNachteil (quality of being inadequate), Minuspunkt (mark for bad conduct)
Portuguesedemérito (quality of being inadequate)
Spanishdemérito (quality of being inadequate), descalificación, sanción (mark for bad conduct)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does demerit come from?

From Middle English demerit, demerite, from Old French desmerite (modern French démérite) and its etymon Latin dēmeritum. By surface analysis, de- + merit.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).