Competency vs Incompetence - What's the difference?
competency | incompetence | Related terms |
(obsolete) A sufficient supply (of).
* 1612 , John Smith, Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia , in Kupperman 1988, p. 178:
* (Ambrose Bierce)
(obsolete) A sustainable income.
* Shakespeare
* 1915 , :
The ability to perform some task; competence.
* Burke
* 2004 , Bill Clinton, My Life
(legal) Meeting specified qualifications to perform.
(linguistics) implicit knowledge of a languageās structure.
Inability to perform; lack of competence; ineptitude.
* 1851:
* 1949:
* 1974:
Competency is a related term of incompetence.
As nouns the difference between competency and incompetence
is that competency is (obsolete) a sufficient supply (of) while incompetence is inability to perform; lack of competence; ineptitude.competency
English
Noun
(competencies)- the next day they returned unsuspected, leaving their confederates to follow, and in the interim, to convay them a competencie of all things they could
- Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.
- He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. He knew that the lack made a man petty, mean, grasping; it distorted his character and caused him to view the world from a vulgar angle; when you had to consider every penny, money became of grotesque importance: you needed a competency to rate it at its proper value.
- The loan demonstrates, in regard to instrumental resources, the competency of this kingdom to the assertion of the common cause.
- By the year 2000, American students will leave grades four, eight, and twelve having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography....
Synonyms
* See alsoincompetence
English
Noun
(-)- ... at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals--morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck
- Winston did not know why Withers had been disgraced. Perhaps it was for corruption or incompetence . Perhaps Big Brother was merely getting rid of a too-popular subordinate.
- The factory where she worked was a poisonous mass of incompetence , favoritism, and sabotage.