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Quality vs Mettle - What's the difference?

quality | mettle |

As nouns the difference between quality and mettle

is that quality is (uncountable) level of excellence while mettle is a quality of endurance and courage.

As a adjective quality

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

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

    * * *

    mettle

    English

    Noun

    (-)
  • A quality of endurance and courage.
  • * 360 BCE , , Book VIII.
    • In the succeeding generation rulers will be appointed who have lost the guardian power of testing the metal of your different races, which, like Hesiod's, are of gold and silver and brass and iron.
  • * 1599 , '', act iv, scene 8 (''First Folio ed.)
    • By this Day and this Light, the fellow ha's mettell enough in his belly.
  • * 2001 , Harry J. Alexandrowicz, Testing your Mettle: Tough Problems and Real-world Solutions for Middle and High School Teachers , page xiii
    • Please read on and discover the issues in education that test the mettle of those who experience this world every day.
  • Good temperament and character.
  • * 1868 , , Bleak House
    • The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court, still makes good for the Sol, and keeps the court upon its mettle .
  • (obsolete) Metal; a metallic substance.
  • * 1837 , Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy , page 78
    • They have neither gold nor silver of their own, wine nor oyl, or scarce any corn growing in those United Provinces, little or no wood, tin, lead, iron, silk, wooll, any stuff almost, or mettle ; and yet Hungary, Transilvania, that brag of their mines, fertile England, cannot compare with them.

    Synonyms

    * (quality of endurance and courage) courage, heart, spirit

    Related terms

    * mettlesome