merit vs prestige

merit

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

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

prestige

noun
  • The quality of how good the reputation of something or someone is, how favourably something or someone is regarded. 

verb
  • To start over at an earlier point in a video game with some type of bonus or reward. 

adj
  • Regarded as relatively prestigious; often, considered the standard language or language variety, or a part of such a variety. 

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