History
In many cases the term is conferred automatically upon all persons who retire at a given rank. This is the usual case for retired professors. In other cases, it is used when a person of importance in a given profession retires or hands over the position so that his former rank can still be used in his title.
In the United States, the word is used either as a postpositional adjective (e.g., "professor emeritus"), or as a preposition adjective (e.g., "emeritus professor"). There is a third usage, although not employed as often, in which the word follows a full title (e.g., professor of medicine, emeritus.)
It is also commonly used in business and nonprofit organizations to denote perpetual status of the founder of an organization or individuals who moved the organization to new heights as a former key member on the board of directors (e.g., chairman emeritus; director emeritus; president of the board emeritus).
In the United Kingdom and most other parts of the world, the term "emeritus professor" is given only to a person who has already had full professorial status before he or she retired. The possession of a PhD or other higher degree is not sufficient for calling onself "emeritus professor" upon retirement. The term "Professor Emeritus" is also recognised in the UK. The word is capitalized when it forms part of a title which is capitalized. The word is capitalized when it joins another capitalized word.
Emereri is a compound of the prefix e- (a variant of ex-) meaning "out of" or "from" and merēre meaning "earn". The past participle of emeritus is emereri meaning to "earn one's discharge by service". Emeritus does not necessarily indicate that the person is retired from all the duties of her/his previous positions; he/she may continue to exercise some of them.
Read more about this topic: Emeritus
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)