Adjective

(head)

deserved

It was a merited reward.

* {{quote-news, year=2014

, date=November 14 , author=Stephen Halliday , title=Scotland 1-0 Republic of Ireland: Maloney the hero , work=The Scotsman citation , page= , passage=Maloney’s moment of magic ensured they did not. For Scotland, who produced the best of what cohesive football there was on the night, it was a merited outcome.}}

Adjective

(en adjective)

(rare) Fitting, appropriate, deserved, especially denoting punishment

* 1591 ?, William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part ii , Act 3, Scene 1:

Unless it were a bloody murderer, / Or foul felonious thief that fleeced poor passengers, / I never gave them condign punishment:

* 1885 , William Schwenk Gilbert, The Mikado , Act I:

Pooh-bah: And so, / Although / I wish to go, / And greatly pine / To brightly shine, / And take the line / Of a hero fine, / With grief condign / I must decline –

* 1962 , Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire :

For a Christian, no Beyond is acceptable or imaginable without the participation of God in our eternal destiny, and this in turn implies a condign punishment for every sin, great and small.

* 2004 , George F. Will, "Voters' Obligations", in The Washington Post , October 21, 2004:

[A]n undervote usually reflects either voter carelessness, for which the voter suffers the condign punishment of an unrecorded preference, or reflects the voter's choice not to express a preference[.]