Emeritus

Emeritus (/ᵻˈmɛrᵻtəs/; feminine emerita or emeritus; plural emeriti (masc.) or emeritae (fem.); abbreviation emer.)" (Latin ēx, "out of", and meritus, "merit"), in its current usage, is an adjective used to designate a retired professor, pastor, bishop, Pope, president, prime minister, or other personages.

In some cases the term is conferred automatically upon all persons who retire at a given rank, but in others it remains a mark of distinguished service, awarded to only a few on retirement. It is also used when a person of distinction in a profession retires or hands over the position, enabling their erstwhile rank to be retained in their title. The term Emeritus does not necessarily signify that a person has relinquished all the duties of their erstwhile position and they may continue to exercise some of them.

Emerere is a compound of the prefix e- (a variant of ex-) meaning "out of" or "from" and merēre meaning "earn". The past participle of emerere is emeritus, and the original meaning is "to serve out, to complete one's service". The female equivalent, emerita (/ᵻˈmɛrᵻtə/), is also sometimes used, but as is often true of loanwords, the use of the donor language's inflectional system faces limits in the recipient language. Although Latin and some Romance languages inflect professor/professora for men and women, in English professor is not inflected for gender (both men and women use it), and Emeritus is often similarly uninflected.