5 uses
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Definition
capable (able to do something in a generally satisfactory manner) — sometimes specifically to have legal capability
- In carrying out this bequest of labor to Dorothea, as in all else, Mr. Casaubon had been slow and hesitating, oppressed in the plan of transmitting his work, as he had been in executing it, by the sense of moving heavily in a dim and clogging medium: distrust of Dorothea's competence to arrange what he had prepared was subdued only by distrust of any other redactor.Book 5 — The Dead Hand (62% in)
- Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude.Prelude (76% in)
- "In my opinion," said Lydgate, "legal training only makes a man more incompetent in questions that require knowledge a of another kind.Book 2 — Old and Young (34% in)
- The trash talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate, because it gave precisely the sort of prestige which an incompetent and unscrupulous man would desire, and was sure to be imputed to him by the simmering dislike of the other medical men as an encouragement on his own part of ignorant puffing.Book 5 — The Dead Hand (18% in)
- Have you sense enough to recognize now your incompetence to judge and act for me—to interfere with your ignorance in affairs which it belongs to me to decide on?Book 7 — Two Temptations (28% in)
There are no more uses of "competent" in Middlemarch.
Typical Usage
(best examples)