Prestige is the respect a position or a thing commands. Great prestige, a prestige address, lose prestige.
It is respect based on standing rather than on liking, which is why institutions, universities and job titles have it. A prestige project is one undertaken chiefly for the standing it brings. The word originally meant a conjuring trick, from a Latin word for an illusion — the sense of dazzle survived while the deception dropped away, which some would say is fitting.
1nounprestigeThe respect a position or thing commands.
“Winning the award brought the small school a great deal of prestige.”
prestige is a form of standing.
French prestige meant an illusion or enchantment, from Latin praestigium, a delusion. English borrowed the dazzle and dropped the trickery, which took about a hundred years.
Latin
praestīgium — a delusion, an illusion
French
prestige — illusion, fascination, enchantment, prestige
English, today
prestige
Built from
From French prestige (“illusion, fascination, enchantment, prestige”), from Latin praestīgium (“a delusion, an illusion”). Despite the phonetic similarities and the old meaning of “delusion, illusion, trick”, the word has a different root than prestidigitator (“conjurer”) and prestidigitation.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA