competence
noun
Simple meaning
The ability to do something well enough.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kahmpuhtinsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkɑmpətɪns
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
uncountable
The quality or state of being competent, i.e. able or suitable for a general role.
countable
The quality or state of being able or suitable for a particular task; the quality or state of being competent for a particular task or skill.
The quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and intellectually
linguistics
The system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language, as opposed to its actual use in concrete situations (performance), cf. linguistic competence.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The quality or state of being competent, i.e. able or suitable for a general role.
Used this way, competence is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use competence
- “Her competence in the role was evident to everyone.”
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Antonyms
Sense: quality or state of being competent
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.