honours list
- noun
- /ˈɒnəz lɪst/
- UK
:
lista de honores
- The university published the honours list to celebrate the top-performing graduates.
Examples
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Students eagerly awaited the announcement of the honours list after their final exams.
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Being on the honours list is a great achievement that reflects years of hard work.
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Will the Prime Minister block that honours list or will he buckle to her as well?
Synonyms
1
3.9
An official list published after exams showing students and the degree class they received
How Highly Ranked
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning of 'honours list' is directly derivable from combining 'honours' (an award/recognition for academic achievement) with 'list' (a recorded sequence of names/items): it denotes a list of students who received honours. This is a straightforward, compositional noun + noun construction found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both words would likely infer the meaning.
Etymology
The noun honours list comes from old university practice of posting the names of students who earned 'honours' on a public notice board after exams. Seeing your name on that board showed you were one of the 'top students', so today honours list means an official list that ranks students by the level of 'honours' they got.