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Quality vs Potential - What's the difference?

quality | potential |

In archaic terms the difference between quality and potential

is that quality is high social position. (See also {{term|the quality|lang=en}}. while potential is being potent; endowed with energy adequate to a result; efficacious; influential.

As nouns the difference between quality and potential

is that quality is level of excellence while potential is currently unrealized ability (with the most common adposition being to.

As adjectives the difference between quality and potential

is that quality is being of good worth, well made, fit for purpose while potential is existing in possibility, not in actuality.

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

    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

    potential

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Currently unrealized ability (with the most common adposition being to )
  • Even from a young age it was clear that she had the potential to become a great musician.
  • (physics) The or the gravitoelectric field.Novello, M. ? VII Brazilian School of Cosmology and Gravitation, Rio de Janeiro, August 1993] Atlantica Séguier Frontières, 1994, p. 257 ? "In general, a system can have both translational and rotational accelerations, however. It follows from Einstein's principle of equivalence that locally—i.e., to the extent that spacetime curvature can be neglected—gravitational effects are the same as inertial effects; therefore, gravitation can be approximately described in terms of gravitoelectric and gravitomagnetic fields corresponding to translational and rotational inertia, respectively. This is the gravitational Larmor theorem, which is very useful in the post-Newtonian approximation to general relativity. The gravitomagnetic field of a massive rotating body is a measure of its absolute rotation."''Thorne, Kip S. ? [http://einstein.stanford.edu/content/sci_papers/papers/nz-Thorne_101.pdf#page=3&view=FitV Gravitomagnetism, Jets in Quasars, and the Stanford Gyroscope Experiment] From the book "Near Zero: New Frontiers of Physics" (eds. J. D. Fairbank, B. S. Deaver, Jr., C. W. F. Everitt, P. F. Michelson), W. H. Freeman and Company, New York, 1988, pp. 3, 4 (575, 576) ? ''"From our electrodynamical experience we can infer immediately that any rotating spherical body (e.g., the sun or the earth) will be surrounded by a radial gravitoelectric (Newtonian) field ''g''''' and a dipolar gravitomagnetic field '''''H'' . The gravitoelectric monopole moment is the body's mass M; the gravitomagnetic dipole moment is its spin angular momentum S."''Grøn, Øyvind; Hervik, Sigbjørn ? [http://books.google.com/books?id=IyJhCHAryuUC&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=%22The+gravitoelectric+field+is+the+Newtonian+part+of+the+gravitational+field,+while+the+gravitomagnetic+field+is+the+non-Newtonian+part.%22&source=bl&ots=vF8KM_toq1&sig=5rqHuClm2mU_RdeMVPP0xPth7bA&hl=en&ei=Pd8DTd-kLMLrOdKx0LsB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1 Einstein's General Theory of Relativity with Modern Applications in Cosmology Springer, 2007, p. 203 ? ''"In the Newtonian theory there will not be any gravitomagnetic effects; the Newtonian potential is the same irrespective of whether or not the body is rotating. Hence the gravitomagnetic field is a purely relativistic effect. The gravitoelectric field is the Newtonian part of the gravitational field, while the gravitomagnetic field is the non-Newtonian part."
  • (physics) The work (energy) required to move a reference particle from a reference location to a specified location in the presence of a force field, for example to bring a unit positive electric charge from an infinite distance to a specified point against an electric field.
  • (grammar) A verbal construction or form stating something is possible or probable.
  • Adjective

    (-)
  • Existing in possibility, not in actuality.
  • The heroic man,—and is not every man, God be thanked, a potential hero?—has to do so, in all times and circumstances. Carlyle, Thomas ? Chartism ? Chapman & Hall, 1858, p. 229
  • (archaic) Being potent; endowed with energy adequate to a result; efficacious; influential.
  • And hath, in his effect, a voice potential Shakespeare, William ? Othello ? 1603
  • (physics) A potential field is an irrotational (static) field.
  • From Maxwell equations (6.20) it follows that the electric field is potential: E(r) = ?''grad''?(r).'' ''Soviet Physics, Uspekhi v. 40, issues 1–6, American Institute of Physics, 1997, p. 39
  • (physics) A is an irrotational flow.
  • The non-viscous flow of the vacuum should be potential (irrotational). Volovik, Grigory E. ? The Universe in a Helium Droplet Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 60
  • (grammar) Referring to a verbal construction of form stating something is possible or probable.
  • References