From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdemeritde‧mer‧it /diːˈmerɪt/ noun [countable] 1 formalGOOD POINT OR CHARACTERISTIC a bad quality or feature of somethingdemerit of The merits and demerits (=the good and bad qualities) of this argument have been explored.2 American EnglishSES a mark showing that a student has behaved badly at school → merit
Examples from the Corpus
demerit• With the particular merits and demerits of these proposals I am not here directly concerned.• And Lord Hodson was concerned primarily with the substantive merits and demerits of the Bill, not with its legal technicalities.• You get demerits if you miss a meeting or come late to dinner without calling beforehand.• We sort of kept this demerit scoreboard for the last eight years, until we ran out of space. 