Meretricious, Meritorious

He might have said, though I am putting words in his mouth here, that the expatriate novel, in the hands of someone like Greene, was meretricious, the seedy foreign setting giving an easy drama to the characters.” - V.S. Naipaul’s A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling

Meretricious is an adjective and has more than two meanings: tasteless, gaudy, something that is superficially attractive (misleading) but without real value (meretricious gold ornaments); flashy, pretentious, something that is attractive but has no real value; someone wearing cheap or flashy ornaments or jewellery; no substance in something such as meretricious remarks; falsely attractive or alluring someone; attracting someone in a vulgar either by flaunting false boobs, or ornamentation.

The archaic meaning of meretricious is relating to or pertaining to prostitutes or prostitution, call girls, comfort workers. Legally, meretricious refers to someone having an unlawful sexual connection, or indulging in sexual act without the consent of another person. Variants of meretricious are meretriciously, meretriciousness.

Meretricious comes from the Latin word meretricus, meretrix referring to a prostitute, the person who serves someone for a fee, and has a merit in her. Meretricious relationships are frowned upon, so are meretricious things upon discovering. Merit is a noun meaning excellence, worthy, the quality of deserving well; when someone deserves a reward, or recognition for doing or achieving something; when someone is entitled for a reward or gratitude.

Bhutan earned the status as the most-happiest nation in the world based on Gross Domestic Happiness: it got the merit because it focusses on mental happiness as well rather than only on material possessions, and income. Meritorious comes from the word merit along with its meritable, merited, meritedly, mertiless, mertinmonger, meritocracy, meritocratic, meritoriously, meretorousness, merits.

Meritorious is an adjective meaning someone deserving of merit for his work or deeds on Earth, or for his or her good actions going to heaven upon exiting from this world (if someone believes in religious gateways); deserving reward for someone’s actions or commendation. Meritorious means admirable, commendable, creditable, deserving, excellent, exemplary, good, honourable, laudable, praiseworthy, and virtuous, worthy

The opposite of meritorious is immeritorious. Meritocracy is a form of government by person selected according to their merit, a group of persons appointed or selected to accomplish or execute something because they have merit (not wealth, not the luxuries of inheritance), a society or country government by meritocracy.

When people get to rule over others based on inheritance, and privileges bestowed by parents, it could be a threat to meritocracy. Is India a meritocratic society?