Word of the week: Meretricious

meretricious

\ˌmer-ə-ˈtri-shəs\

"Meretricious" is a slippery word. It means flashy but cheap; gaudy. It’s the kind of sneer that a highbrow critic might lob at a rival’s work. Bravura, but no substance.

But whenever I run across the word I have trouble remembering that it’s supposed to be an insult. I wondered at first whether some bit of glamour from its near-homophone “meritorious” was clinging to it? After all, “meritorious” is a noble word, with noble associations. It means “worthy, deserving of praise.” Here’s Fabian’s Chronicles in 1494:

Good and merytoryous deedys shulde be holden in memorye. 

Or the alleged last words of Alexander Pope (1744):

There is nothing meritorious but virtue and friendship. 

(I am skeptical about this attribution, actually, because Pope has been credited with several different sets of last words, most of which are much funnier. Still, it sounds pretty good.) And so when I see something like this, I get a touch of cognitive whiplash:

Let us be thought over-much plain and simple, even bare, rather than gaudy, flashy, cheap and meretricious. Let us manifest the taste of gentlemen. 

(That’s Frederick Law Olmstead in 1893, pointing out that the worst thing you could possibly be is [shudder] Tacky.)

But it turns out that on some level my confusion is, well, merited. Because in fact meritorious and meretricious come from the exact same root: the Latin merērī, which means to earn money or to work for hire. Merērī is related to the Greek μείρεσθαι (meiresthai), which means to deserve, or to earn as one’s share.

So what happened, that one branch of the word is laudatory and the other an insult?

Alas, it’s one of the oldest stories in the world. Merērī—whence “meritorious”—often referred to a soldier earning wages. A praiseworthy endeavor. But “meretricious” comes from an offshoot noun, meretrix—meaning a woman who works for pay. Therefore a prostitute, because Obviously. What else?

Here’s Sir Francis Bacon in 1626, using the word in its more literal sense:

The Delight in Meretricious Embracements (wher sinne is turned into Art) maketh Marriage a dull thing.

There’s so much to unpack here! Those “meretricious embracements” (i.e. women having sex in exchange for money) make “sinne” into an art form. And then the women’s clients, lured away by the gaudy & flashy (but fundamentally empty) attractions of the courtesan, get bored with the meritorious procreative sex they are supposed to be having with their wives. Note the slaps here not only against women, and sex, and men, but also against Art, which you had better not enjoy too much, because it might really just be tarted up sinne.

When the word began to be used in a more figurative sense things started getting really ugly. Here’s a 17th century Protestant getting all riled up about the Catholics:

…the meretricious Gaudiness of the Church of Rome, and the squallid Sluttery of Fanatick Conventicles. 

Now I’ve been to the Vatican, and I will grant that it is pretty darn gaudy. But this is not just about bad taste. This guy wants you to be repulsed by Rome’s wealth and corruption, so naturally he emphasizes how gross and female it all is. Not only have you got a gesture towards the Whore of Babylon (a favorite Protestant trope), all bedizened on the outside and corrupt and stinking within, you’ve ALSO got the prurient fascination with sluttish “Conventicles,” themselves presumably riddled with madness and disease. (There is an entire genre of anti-Catholic screeds that essentially boils down to Nuns Gone Wild.)

The Whore of Babylon, riding the 7-headed Beast of the Apocalypse. From the Luther Bible (1534), of course. (Image from Wikipedia)

So what should have been an honest word has acquired a train of unsavory associations. “Meretricious” may have started out referring to hard work for a deserved wage, but it’s now gotten all tangled up with harlotry/sex/sin/corruption/venereal disease/glitz/Vegas/flash—and pretty soon you’ve got guys like Frederick Law Olmsted (who may have been a brilliant landscape architect but also seems to have been a pompous jerk) going on about how we have to have Gentlemanly taste and not get snookered by shallow and showy ornamentation.  Because that’s for harlots, amirite?

Perhaps this is why I find myself unwilling to accept “meretricious” as a pejorative. I am a woman who works for pay. And I don’t like to see a meritorious word end up saddled with the whole messy baggage of the Patriarchy.