All 10 Uses
competent
in
Into Thin Air
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- Lou, hampered by a leg muscle he'd injured on the first morning of the trek to Base Camp, was slow but competent.†
Chpt 7 *competent = sufficiently capable
- On the other hand, our group was far more competent than a number of the other teams on the mountain, There were some climbers Of very dubious ability on a commercial expedition led by an Englishman with undistinguished Himalayan credentials.†
Chpt 8
- Earlier, we'd noticed the Taiwanese group because they looked so incompetent.†
Chpt 8incompetent = not sufficiently capablestandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in incompetent means not and reverses the meaning of competent. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- "With so many incompetent people on the mountain," Rob said with a frown one evening in late April, "I think it's pretty unlikely that we'll get through this season without something bad happening up high."†
Chpt 8
- A certain coldness, strikingly similar in tone, emerges from the writings of Buhl, John Harlin, Bonattl Bon ington, and Haston: the coldness of competence.†
Chpt 11competence = ability
- He first met Fischer and Hall on the slopes of K2 in 1992, where his competence and easygoing demeanor left a favorable impression on both men.†
Chpt 15
- Throughout April and early May, Rob Hall had expressed his concern that one or more of the less competent teams might blunder into a bad jam, compelling our group to rescue them, thereby ruining our summit bid.†
Chpt 19competent = sufficiently capable
- A few reckless souls might perish trying to reach the summit without gas, but the great bulk of marginally competent climbers would be forced to turn back by their own physical limitations before they ascended high enough to get into serious trouble.†
Chpt 21
- With Breashears, Ed Viesturs, and Robert Schauer, they were without question the strongest, most competent team on the mountain.†
Chpt 21
- Although he had no previous high-altitude experience, he was a competent mountaineer who'd spent eighteen months in the frigid wastes of Antarctica working as a geophysicist-he was far and away the most accomplished climber remaining on the South African team.†
Chpt 21
Definitions:
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(1)
(competent) capable (able to do something in a generally satisfactory manner) -- sometimes specifically to have legal capability
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) In the field of law, competent has the specialized meaning of being legally qualified to do something such as to be mentally fit to make reasonable decisions; or to have jurisdiction or authority to take an action.
In classic literature, a competency can refer to having an income or assets to support living expenses.