demerit vs merit

demerit

noun
  • A quality of being inadequate; a fault; a disadvantage 

  • A mark given for bad conduct to a person attending an educational institution or serving in the army. 

  • That which one merits or deserves, either of good or ill; desert. 

merit

noun
  • Usually in the plural form the merits: the substantive rightness or wrongness of a legal argument, a lawsuit, etc., as opposed to technical matters such as the admissibility of evidence or points of legal procedure; (by extension) the overall good or bad quality, or rightness or wrongness, of some other thing. 

  • A claim to commendation or a reward. 

  • A mark or token of approbation or to recognize excellence. 

  • Something deserving or worthy of positive recognition or reward. 

  • The sum of all the good deeds that a person does which determines the quality of the person's next state of existence and contributes to the person's growth towards enlightenment. 

verb
  • To be deserving or worthy. 

  • To deserve, to earn. 

How often have the words demerit and merit occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )