Definition of "emeritus"
emeritus
adjective
not comparable, feminine singular emerita, (masculine) plural emeriti or (rare) emerituses, feminine plural emeritae
(often postpositive) Retired, but retaining an honorific version of a previous title.
Quotations
I must confess that in such an answer I see nothing worthy of a philosopher; and should rather have looked for it from a literary petit-maître than from an emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy.
1823, “Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected. Letter V.”, in Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected; and Other Papers (De Quincey’s Works; XIV), London: James Hogg & Sons, published 1860, page 83
Number and Description of Professorships. 1. An emeritus professorship of obstetrics.
1837, Annual Report of the Regents of the University of the State of New-York, Albany, N.Y.: […] Croswell, van Benthusyen and Burt, page 38
Thus far, no teachers' retirement fund, as such, has been established. The board has thus far met this problem by electing teachers unable to perform regular service as teachers emeriti, although this is only a temporary arrangement and committees of the teachers and the board are now considering the feasibility of the establishment of the retirement fund.
1912, Charles S. Foos, “[Reports of City, Borough and Township Superintendents.] Reading.”, in Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: For the Year Ending July 3, 1911 (Official Document; no. 5), Harrisburg, Pa.: C. E. Aughinbaugh, […], page 250
Flappers, ex-flappers, flapper emerituses! He had them eating out of his hand, jumping through hoops.
1926 November 28, Jane Corby, “Georgie Had Too Much Love: Lord Byron, as a Sheik, Was Deserving, It Is Claimed, Of More Sympathy Than Ordinary Men”, in Sunday Eagle Magazine, Brooklyn, N.Y., page four, column 1
“If we have more mayor emerituses,” said Commissioner Frank Colbourn, “we might as well round up George C. Pardee, M. C. Chapman and many other distinguished ex-mayors of Oakland.”
1931 June 27, “Project for Mayor Emeritus Dropped”, in Oakland Tribune, volume CXIV, number 178, Oakland, Calif., page 5, column 1
Trustees of the University of North Carolina today accepted the voluntary retirements of Dr. Eugene Clyde Brooks, vice-president in charge of State College, and Dr. J. I. Foust, vice-president for the Women’s college, and made them president emerituses of their respective institutions at salaries of $4,000 a year.
1934 June 5, “Brooks And Foust Resign As U. N. C. Vice-Presidents: […]”, in The Daily Times-News, volume 46, number 83, Burlington, N.C., page one, column 1
But there are also two women professors emeritae, nine clinical professors, 24 lecturers, three visiting lecturers, nine associates, 55 instructors, one tutor, 84 teaching fellows, 121 women members of research staffs, 39 assistants, and variously talented holders of otherwise unclassifiable posts.
1958, Harvard Alumni Bulletin, volume 61, Boston, Mass.: […] [F]or the Harvard Alumni Association by the Harvard Bulletin, Inc., page 376
“I think these [parking] lots are the best thing that’s happened to Orlando insofar as the continued growth of the city is concerned. / “They affect everyone, from janitors to chairman emerituses,” smiled [Claude] Wolfe with an obvious reference to First National Bank board chairman emeritus Linton Allen, who was nearby.
1961 November 25, Charlie Wadsworth, “Hush Puppies”, in Orlando Sentinel, volume 77, number 195, Orlando, Fla., pages 4—C, column 1
According to the recently amended firemen’s and policemen’s retirement act, the auditor said two chief emerituses (one for each department) are currently over retirement age, 65, but their positions are considered active.
1975 December 24, Sandy Simmons, “Phenix City Overspent Expenditures”, in The Columbus Enquirer, 148th year, number 147, Columbus, Ga., page B-1, columns 3–4
“There are professor emerituses from around the world who come to the Napa Valley to visit. They could be giving lectures and short courses which would be intensely attended by viticulturiests[sic] and wine-makers,” said [Richard] Steltzner.
1981 July 23, Nancy Stenson, “Problem Of Funding: College Pressing Plans For Wine Program”, in The Napa Register, 119th year, number 280, page 2, column 2
I read in the church bulletin that the preacher of the day, filling the pulpit in the absence of a full-time pastor, was Dr. James A. Langley, executive director editor emeritus of the D.C. Baptist Convention. A title of nobility, editor emeritus is. I expected the best from his sermon. Sure enough, we were in the Book of Micah, Chapter 6, Verse 8, as Dr. Langley noted, often considered “the very essence of the Bible.” “And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” The words may appear so simple, Dr. Langley said, “but they are so demanding.” And while not every Baptist preacher would attempt mixing MarK Twain with Micah, such is the leeway granted editor emerituses.
1999 September 22, Joe Murray, “On the Road: Right at home at the First Baptist”, in Longview News-Journal, page 2A, columns 4–5
Linda Lambert is founder of the Center for Educational Leadership at California State University, Hayward, where she is professor emeritus.The title professor emeritus is used gender-neutrally.
2003, Linda Lambert, Leadership Capacity for Lasting School Improvement, Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, back cover
[Suzanne] Keller, the first woman to be granted tenure at Princeton, is one of a small but growing number of professors emeritae.
2007 April 18, Laura Fitzpatrick, “Retired faculty enjoy their ‘permanent sabbatical’”, in Marilyn H. Marks, editor, Princeton Alumni Weekly, volume 107, number 12, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, page 12, column 2
Retired professors emeriti, junior or adjunct faculty, community college instructors, and transplanted or unknown scholars with exotic names, for example, may find themselves disadvantaged in the competition for textbook authorship (though not necessarily for other kinds of books).
2008, Mary Ellen Lepionka, “Interest a Publisher in Your Manuscript”, in Writing and Developing Your College Textbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Textbook Authorship and Higher Education Publishing, 2nd edition, Gloucester, Mass.: Atlantic Path Publishing, page 53
Pope Benedict XVI will keep the name Benedict XVI and become the Roman pontiff emeritus or pope emeritus, the Vatican announced on Tuesday, putting an end to days of speculation on how the pope will be addressed once he ceases to be the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics on Thursday.
2013 February 26, Gaia Pianigiani, Elisabetta Povoledo, “Benedict XVI to be known as emeritus in retirement”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, archived from the original on 2023-01-31
Applied to the decision to resign, I read the formula this way: It was fitting, because Pope Benedict [XVI] realized he was losing the strength necessary for his arduous office. He could do it, because long before, he had already thought out theologically, in a groundbreaking way, the possibility of popes emeriti in the future. And so then he did it.
2020, Georg Gänswein, “The Expanded Papacy”, in Michael Miller, transl., How the Catholic Church Can Restore Our Culture, Irondale, Ala.: EWTN Publishing
noun
plural emeriti or emerituses
(plural emeriti or (rare) emerituses) A (male) person who is retired from active service or an occupation, especially one who retains an honorific version of a previous title.
Quotations
Martin Engels said: “I am not posted on dyke-bridges, but if it is a Dutch scheme there may be something in it. That engineer made a mistake by calling the city officials emerituses. He should not call people names if he wants the Municipal Council to build his twenty-four-million-dollar bridge. If the Tammany organization wants to build a dyke-bridge, I’m for it.”
1900 September 21, “Dyke-Bridge Proposed. Engineer Santi Wants to Unite Manhattan and Richmond Boroughs—Tammany Men’s Views.”, in The New York Times, volume L, number 15,820, New York, N.Y., page 11, column 7
Now, we have no criticism for college presidents and emerituses as such. A man may be all that and still be a pretty good fellow—whatever the effect might be on his character and happiness. But there is one thing certain—no one man can know it all.
1914 February 15, “The Case of Dr. Eliot”, in The Topeka Daily Capital, volume XXXVII, number 362, Topeka, Kan., page 8 B, column 1
A “State-of-Mind” called Winter Park, / Where genius thrives, a brilliant spark, / Emerituses tramp thru dark / To hear illustrious profs remark / On “culchar,” tone and style. / So, hark, / While dogs, in tongues semantic, bark!
1938 April 12, “How Time Flies (From Reporter-Star Files)”, in Orlando Reporter-Star, volume 52, number 47, Orlando, Fla., poem “Rhapsodies!”, stanza I, page four, column 3
Oh you, veteran crime reporter, you grave old usher, you once popular policeman, now in solitary confinement after gracing that school crossing for years, you wretched emeritus read to by a boy!
1955, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 8, in Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, part 1, page 30
Should he take the international presidency in a few years he would be in line for the AFL-CIO National Executive Council, now replete with emerituses.
1963 April 22, Victor Riesel, “Inside Labor—Power’s Star Rides on Union Vote”, in Omaha World-Herald, 98th year, number 176, Omaha, Neb., page 3M, column 4
Back then, the poet Witter Bynner was invited to give a series of talks. His classes were small. It was beautiful weather. He took them out on the lawn. The faculty never forgot. To this very day you can find snowy haired emerituses toddling about in homspun[sic] tweeds who will tell you, “Had a poet here once. Name of Winter, think it was. Took the students out on the lawn.”
1964 December 9, Kenneth Rexroth, “Depersonalized Campus”, in San Francisco Examiner, page 46, column 5
The Emerituses Are Back / More unfinished business: / The Commission on Governmental Ethics voted this week to look into the “emeritus” pay drawn by five retired state college presidents. The motion to investigate was made by commission member Victor Bussie, state president of the AFL-CIO, who said it was desirable to determine “whether or not university and college funds are being paid to people who are not performing useful work.” The only “no” vote on Mr. Bussie’s motion was cast by Commission Chairman Vanue Lacour, who argued that the code of ethics was never intended to apply to college and university affairs.
1974 March 30, Adras LaBorde, “Talk of the Town”, in Alexandria Daily Town Talk, volume XCII, number 14, Alexandria, La. – Pineville, La., section A, page four, column 5
WHEN IT was announced Tuesday that my title henceforth will be “editor emeritus,” with Mike Kidder taking over as editor of the paper, I received a call from a very high-ranking Stanford official. “I never knew they had emerituses in your business,” he said. “I never did either,” I replied, “but it seemed to hit the right combination of subliminal dignity and overt ambiguity.”
1984 April 8, Leonard Koppett, “An ‘editor emeritus’ may yet produce a ‘pontificus maximus’”, in The Peninsula Times Tribune, page C-3, column 1
As is so often the case, this particular critic is a professor emeritus and emerituses often grow reckless once free of the daily grind of dispensing received opinion.
1996 May 23, Gore Vidal, “Twain on the Grand Tour”, in Robert B[enjamin] Silvers, Barbara Epstein, editors, The New York Review of Books, New York, N.Y.: Rea S. Hederman, archived from the original on 2023-02-06, part 1
“We could try going back, but that probably means dropping the expedition. Have you talked to Duden?” “He wouldn’t like that. He’s retiring, and emerituses don’t get grants the way they used to. He needs this. His career hasn’t had many successes.”
2016, Christopher Bernard, Voyage to a Phantom City, Berkeley, Calif.: Regent Press, page 70
(rare, plural emerituses) An honorific version of a previous title.
Quotations
With a string of “emerituses” behind his name, last of which was acquired with the Welfare society resignation, [George Q.] Sheppard now lives in retirement in his home at The Hill, 722 King street.
1941 May 31, Bob Zissa, “Typewriter Becomes His Best Pal: ‘It’s Easy to Learn to Loaf’, Declares Retired Hill Master”, in Pottstown Mercury, volume 10, number 210, Pottstown, Pa., page one, column 7
NOW THE VENERABLE and distinguished First National Bank bossman has joined a distinguished league. To my knowledge, he shares his honors with two other distinguished Orlandoans — Dr. J. Powell Tucker, pastor emeritus of the First Baptist Church, and J. C. Brossier, editor emeritus of the Orlando Evening Star. And now that Dr. and Mrs. Tucker have returned home from a month’s vacation trip, the good doctor can sit down today with Mr. Allen and Mr. Brossier and they can talk about their emerituses.
1961 August 15, Charlie Wadsworth, “Hush Puppies”, in Orlando Sentinel, volume 77, number 93, Orlando, Fla., pages 4—B, column 1
Marshall Keeble, president emeritus of Nashville Christian Institute, and A. M. Burton, president emeritus of Life & Casualty Insurance, have more in common than their age (85), their frequent meetings or their emerituses.
1964 March 29, George Barker, “Brother Keeble and the Lord”, in The Nashville Tennessean Sunday Magazine, page 6, column 1
NOW THE holder of numerous emerituses and honorary titles in recognition of her long service, Mrs. [Chalmers W.] Hutchison [a.k.a. Bessie Hutchison] still has not retired from her lively interest in all things that are “moving” nor from watching the contemporary scene.
1966 September 19, Pauline Naylor, “90 Years Don’t Fetter Interest”, in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 86th year, number 231, page 3-B, column 1
Rev Mr Hilkowitz left Paarl in 1914 to settle in England and was succeeded as minister of the congregation in 1915 by the Rev Hillel Strelitz (see below), who served the community for 25 years before receiving his emeritus in 1941.
1993, Charles Press, The Light of Israel: The Story of the Paarl Jewish Community, Paarl: Jubilee Publications, page 47
Appointed Professor at the Collège de France in 1947, in the Chair of differential and functional equations, that he occupies till his emeritus in 1978, Leray developes[sic] till 1950 his ideas on the cohomology of closed continuous maps, fiber spaces and Lie groups (Leray-Hirsch theorem) , and continues his work in fluid mechanics by contributing to the theory of airplane wings , in the line of Tchapliguine and Prandtl’s work.
1998, Topological Methods in Nonlinear Analysis, page 201
In 1926 he [Hermann Staudinger] accepted a position at the University of Freiburg, as Head of the Laboratory of Chemistry, and remained there until his emeritus in 1951.
2003, “ Staudinger, Hermann”, in Francis Leroy, editor, A Century of Nobel Prize Recipients: Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine, Marcel Dekker, page 54, column 2
From 1985 until the time of his emeritus in 1994 he was professor of sanitary engineering – particularly in relation to public drinking water supply matters – at Delft University of Technology.
2008, Wim Ravesteijn, Jan Kop, editors, For Profit and Prosperity: The Contribution Made by Dutch Engineers to Public Works in Indonesia, 1800-2000, Aprilis, page 553
When [Gerhard Herman Johannes Wilhelm Jacobus Geesink] Geesink departed with his emeritus, the Faculty of Letters wanted to make something of it and proposed a successor: [Dirk Hendrik Theodoor] Vollenhoven or J[ohan]. G[erhard]. Ubbink, with special recommendation of the first of these. […] [Cornelis] Van Gelderen was able to depart at last with his emeritus in 1945, [Gerhard Charles] Aalders and [Valentijn] Hepp followed in 1950.
2008, Arie van Deursen, translated by Herbert Donald Morton, The Distinctive Character of the Free University in Amsterdam, 1880-2005: A Commemorative History, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., pages 108 ( Science] Letters and philosophy) and 219 ( Onward along the old track?] Scholarship in the faculties)