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Discipline vs Competency - What's the difference?

discipline | competency |

As nouns the difference between discipline and competency

is that discipline is a controlled behaviour; self-control while competency is a sufficient supply (of).

As a verb discipline

is to train someone by instruction and practice.

discipline

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A controlled behaviour; self-control.
  • * Rogers
  • The most perfect, who have their passions in the best discipline , are yet obliged to be constantly on their guard.
  • An enforced compliance or control.
  • * '>citation
  • A systematic method of obtaining obedience.
  • * C. J. Smith
  • Discipline aims at the removal of bad habits and the substitution of good ones, especially those of order, regularity, and obedience.
  • A state of order based on submission to authority.
  • * Dryden
  • Their wildness lose, and, quitting nature's part, / Obey the rules and discipline of art.
  • A punishment to train or maintain control.
  • * Addison
  • giving her the discipline of the strap
  • A set of rules regulating behaviour.
  • A flagellation as a means of obtaining sexual gratification.
  • A specific branch of knowledge or learning.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Boundary problems , passage=Economics is a messy discipline : too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.}}
    (Bishop Wilkins)
  • A category in which a certain art, sport or other activity belongs.
  • Synonyms

    * (branch or category) field, sphere * (punishment) penalty, sanction

    Antonyms

    * spontaneity

    Derived terms

    * academic discipline

    Verb

    (disciplin)
  • To train someone by instruction and practice.
  • To teach someone to obey authority.
  • To punish someone in order to (re)gain control.
  • To impose order on someone.
  • Synonyms

    * drill

    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