Exemplary means so good that it should be the model for everyone else. Exemplary conduct, an exemplary record, exemplary service.
It is formal praise and it belongs to references, citations and disciplinary findings — an exemplary record means nothing has ever gone wrong. There is a second and quite different legal sense: exemplary damages are awarded to make an example of the defendant, which is punishment rather than compensation. Note exemplar; and that the word comes from example, from the Latin for a sample.
1adjectiveexemplarySo good that it should be the model for everyone else.
“The nurse was praised for her exemplary care of patients during the crisis.”
2adjectiveintendedIntended to make an example, of damages.
“The court awarded exemplary damages to punish the newspaper for its lies.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
exemplary is a quality of being a model.
Latin exemplaris comes from exemplum, a sample or model, from eximere, to take out. Example, exempt and sample come from the same taking out.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁em-
Latin
exemplāris — exemplary; a copy, facsimile
Middle English
exemplarie
English, today
exemplary
Built from
From Middle English exemplarie, from Latin exemplāris (“exemplary; a copy, facsimile”), from exemplum (“an example; a sample; a copy or transcript”). by surface analysis, example + -ary. a doublet of exemplar. First use appears before 1450.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA