honor

Honor, honoris, m., third declension. The older nominative is honos, and both forms sit in the corpus; the r of the oblique cases is a rhotacised s, the same sound change that turns flos into floris and arbos into arboris.

Two senses run together and the plural usually settles which is meant. In the singular it is esteem, the regard a man is held in. In the plural, honores are the elected magistracies that esteem wins him, and the cursus honorum is the fixed ladder from quaestor up to consul. So honores petere is to stand for office, not to fish for compliments. Honoris causa survives untranslated on degree certificates. Note the spelling: British English keeps the u in honour, but the Latin never had one.