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You note that some universities grant emeritus status only to those professors who have a distinguished research record, whereas others automatically bestow the honour on all retiring full professors (Nature 559, 429–431; 2018). As an emeritus professor, I would like to point out that emeritus — an unusual word in that it is derived from two classical roots, rather than one — holds as well for both: ‘e’ is from the Greek for out, and ‘meritus’ from the Latin for ‘deserving, meritorious’, or, more loosely, you deserve to be.
