exemplary

adj

1. Deserving honour, respect and admiration.

   “To answer these questions we must look more closely at the exemplary achievements of [David] Politzer, [David] Gross and [Frank] Wilcek. Here we will see the severe problems facing theorists in both the theoretical and phenomenological exploitation of QCD [quantum chromodynamics].”

2. Of such high quality that it should serve as an example to be imitated; ideal, perfect.

   “Her behaviour was always exemplary.”

   “The Archbishops and Bishops, next under the King, have the government of the Church and affairs ecclesiastical: be not, Sir, a mean to prefer any to those places for any by-respect; but only such as for their learning, gravity, and worth are deserving: and whose lives and doctrine are and ought to be exemplary.”

   “For thus the Saviour of the world became humane, alluring, full of invitation and the ſweetneſſes of love, exemplary, humble and medicinal.”

   “Lady Anne could not repress one involuntary exclamation of "what an inconvenient time Mr. Granard had chosen for his death!" but otherwise she behaved with exemplary propriety. She retired to her dressing-room, which was duly darkened, and there she sat, a white cambric handkerchief in one hand, and a bottle of salts in the other.”

   “A maximum of 80 m.p.h. was quickly reached on the 1 in 264 down through Three Bridges and at this pace the riding was exemplary.”

3. Serving as a warning; monitory.

   “exemplary justice, exemplary punishment, exemplary damages”

   “For certain torts exemplary damages may be awarded to punish the defendant for cynically committing them and other remedies are available which are purely restitutionary in effect, notably restitutionary damages and money had and received.”

4. Providing an example or illustration.

   “[T]ill he infect and poison that age, and spoil that time that he lives in by his exemplary sins, till he be pestis secularis, the plague of that age, peccator secularis, the proverbial sinner of that age, and so be a sinner of a hundred years, till in his actions he have been, or in his desires be, or in the foreknowledge of God would be a sinner of a hundred years, an inveterate, an incorrigible, an everlasting sinner, yet God comes not to curse him.”

   “[...] I want to round off my consideration of poststructuralist geographies by pursuing origami as the exemplary art of spatial science.”

noun

1. (obsolete)An example, or typical instance.

   “[I]n the place by M. Hesk. alledged, denyeth that Baſill calleth breade & wine ἀντίτυπα, or exemplaria, exemplaries of the bodie and bloud of Chriſt after the conſecration, which is an impudent lye; for before the conſecration there are no ſacraments, and ſo no exemplars of the bodie and bloud of Chriſte: therefore if he called them exemplars, it muſt needs be when they are ſacraments, & yᵗ is after conſecration: [...]”

2. (obsolete)A copy of a book or a piece of writing.

   “Farther, more part of the exemplaries, curiouſly ſought by me, and fortunately found in ſundry places of this your dominion, hath bene emprinted in Germany, and now be in the preſſes chefley of Frobenus, [...]”