Resources
ReMUNerate
Think M, as in Money
"... a military career remains popular in part because an officer's renumeration is better..."
"With better renumeration for doctors, it is natural..."
"... the salary would be a drop in the renumerations bucket."
“Renumeration,” reasonable as it may look, has no place in those passages. What’s wanted is “remuneration,” with the “m” first, not the “n.” It’s often just a fancy word for “pay,” as it seems to be in the first example. But the word is usable when we need to cover other forms of reward — bonuses, stock options, and so on — as in that “bucket.”
The reversing of the consonants — NUM instead of the correct MUN — is puzzling. But it is fairly common, especially, it seems, in outlets of the British persuasion.
Some of us (he confessed) used to think “renumerate,” along with its presumed noun, “renumeration,” wasn’t a word at all. Alas, it is, though many dictionaries omit it and it’s not pretty or widely used. It means to enumerate — list one by one — again; count over.
CJR
