It may refer to:
- Merit (Catholicism)
- Merit (Buddhism)
- Meritocracy
merit may also mean:
- Merit (band), a rock band from Syracuse, New York
- Merit (cigarette), a brand of cigarettes made by Altria
- Merit (legal), a legal term used in deciding a legal case
- Merit Computer Network
- Merit pay, term describing performance-related pay
- Merit School of Music, music education organization in metropolitan Chicago, United States
- Merit, a trading name used by the British toy manufacturer J & L Randall
- Merit Medical Systems, a medical device company founded in 1987 and headquartered in Utah, United States
- Merit Energy Company, an international energy company
- Merit Motion Pictures, a documentary film and television production company based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
- Merit, in number theory, the value of gn / log(pn) (see Prime gap)
- Merit good, in economics, a commodity which is judged that an individual or society should have on the basis of need
- Merit Academy, a high school located in Springville, Utah, United States
- Merit, Texas, an unincorporated community in Hunt County, Texas, United States
- Merit Janow, American professor
Famous quotes containing the word merit:
“There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some books which is very rare to find, and yet looks cheap enough. There may be nothing lofty in the sentiment, or fine in the expression, but it is careless country talk. Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. Some have this merit only.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace without grandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,—which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Do they merit vitriol, even a drop of it? Yes, because they corrupt the young, persuading them that the mature world, which produced Beethoven and Schweitzer, sets an even higher value on the transient anodynes of youth than does youth itself.... They are the Hollow Men. They are electronic lice.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)