merit badge
12
2.8
- noun
- /ˈmɛrɪt bædʒ/
- US
:
insignia de mérito
- The scout proudly displayed his collection of merit badges at the ceremony.
- earn merit badges
- merit badge sash
- merit badge for marksmanship
But the good news is, Josie Grossie, it's kind of like a merit badge that you can wear really proudly.
- But the good news is, Josie Grossie, it's kind of like a merit badge that you can wear really proudly.
- And I think that things that accelerate rapidly, like I had a hand in GoPro, what made that go was having the product be kind of a merit badge.
- And if you get the seven drafts back without any red lines, you have your intuitive merit badge, which means you are capable of organic.
Examples
-
I'm working to get my community service merit badge.
-
This is a merit badge.
-
Do you get a merit badge for that?
-
There is no merit badge for what they were doing.
-
Is that a new merit badge?
-
About to earn another merit badge.
-
Scouts enjoy camping, perform community service, learn leadership skills, and work on merit badges.
Blog text (31) -
I was invited that morning, with another, a tenderfoot, to earn my merit badge in compass reading.
Fiction book (1990) -
I had to do community service to earn my service merit badge, so I volunteered to umpire some Little League games.
Blog text (9) -
In Boy Scouts, I had earned a merit badge for "Communications," which required competence in semaphore and Morse code.
Fiction book (1990)
How Prestigious
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a badge awarded in recognition of achievement' is directly derivable from combining 'merit' (worthiness/deserving recognition) with 'badge' (an emblem indicating status or achievement). This noun–noun composition is a straightforward, cross-linguistically common pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Merit badge comes from giving small cloth badges to early scout groups to show a scout's merit, meaning a 'skill' or 'achievement'. Wearing a merit badge showed what a scout could do, so today the phrase means a badge given for a particular 'skill' or 'achievement'.