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Competency vs Quality - What's the difference?

competency | quality |

As nouns the difference between competency and quality

is that competency is (obsolete) a sufficient supply (of) while quality is (uncountable) level of excellence.

As an adjective quality is

being of good worth, well made, fit for purpose.

competency

English

Noun

(competencies)
  • (obsolete) A sufficient supply (of).
  • * 1612 , John Smith, Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia , in Kupperman 1988, p. 178:
    • 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
  • * (Ambrose Bierce)
  • (obsolete) A sustainable income.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.
  • * 1915 , :
    • 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 ability to perform some task; competence.
  • * Burke
    • The loan demonstrates, in regard to instrumental resources, the competency of this kingdom to the assertion of the common cause.
  • * 2004 , Bill Clinton, My Life
    • 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....
  • (legal) Meeting specified qualifications to perform.
  • (linguistics) implicit knowledge of a language’s structure.

    • Synonyms

    * See also

    quality

    English

    Noun

  • (uncountable) Level of excellence
    • This school is well-known for having teachers of high quality .
    Quality of life is usually determined by health, education, and income.
  • *
  • (countable) A property or an attribute that differentiates a thing or person.
    • One of the qualities of pure iron is that it does not rust easily.
    While being impulsive can be great for artists, it is not a desirable quality for engineers.
    Security, stability, and efficiency are good qualities of an operating system.
  • *
  • (archaic) High social position. (See also the quality.)
    • A peasant is not allowed to fall in love with a lady of quality .
    Membership of this golf club is limited to those of quality and wealth.
  • (uncountable) The degree to which a man-made object or system is free from bugs and flaws, as opposed to scope of functions or quantity of items.
  • (thermodynamics) In a two-phase liquid–vapor mixture, the ratio of the mass of vapor present to the total mass of the mixture.
  • (emergency medicine, countable) The third step in OPQRST where the responder investigates what the NOI/MOI feels like.
    • To identify quality try asking, "what does it feel like?".

    Usage notes

    * Adjectives often applied to "quality": high, good, excellent, exceptional, great, outstanding, satisfactory, acceptable, sufficient, adequate, poor, low, bad, inferior, dubious, environmental, visual, optical, industrial, total, artistic, educational, physical, musical, chemical, spiritual, intellectual, architectural, mechanical.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Coordinate terms

    * (a property that differentiates) quiddity

    Derived terms

    (quality) * human quality * industrial quality * quality time * quality of life * the quality, the Quality * total quality management * qualitative

    Related terms

    * qualify

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Being of good worth, well made, fit for purpose.
    • We only sell quality products.
    That was a quality game by Jim Smith.
    A quality system ensures products meet customer requirements.
  • * Harriet (a Cambridge University student), quoted in John Ahier, John Beck, Rob Moore, Graduate Citizens?: Issues of Citizenship and Higher Education , Routledge (2003), ISBN 978-0-415-25722-0, page 114:
    • I mean a lot of the money that obviously goes into universities and their libraries and their facilities and their academics and stuff but I mean I haven’t had a very quality degree to be honest. I think the quality of my education has been crap . . .
  • * 2004 , Vance M. Thompson, MD, in J. Kevin Belville and Ronald J. Smith (editors), LASIK Techniques: Pearls and Pitfalls , SLACK Incorporated, ISBN 978-1-55642-622-3, page 187:
    • For one I wanted to have what I considered a very quality tracking device.
  • * 2008 , Carl Erskine, in Fay Vincent, We Would Have Played for Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk About the Game They Loved , Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-1-4165-5342-7, page 144:
    • A very quality ball club; that was the Braves.

    Derived terms

    * qualityness

    Related terms

    * qualia * qualitative

    External links

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