All 6 Uses
competent
in
Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
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- She had lived several years a servant with a schoolmaster, who, discovering a great quickness of parts in the girl, and an extraordinary desire of learning—for every leisure hour she was always found reading in the books of the scholars—had the good-nature, or folly—just as the reader pleases to call it—to instruct her so far, that she obtained a competent skill in the Latin language, and was, perhaps, as good a scholar as most of the young men of quality of the age.†
Book 1competent = sufficiently capable
- Above all others, men of genius and learning shared the principal place in his favour; and in these he had much discernment: for though he had missed the advantage of a learned education, yet, being blest with vast natural abilities, he had so well profited by a vigorous though late application to letters, and by much conversation with men of eminence in this way, that he was himself a very competent judge in most kinds of literature.†
Book 1
- From which she had attained a very competent skill in politics, and could discourse very learnedly on the affairs of Europe.†
Book 6 *
- A competent knowledge of history and of the belles-lettres is here absolutely necessary; and without this share of knowledge at least, to affect the character of an historian, is as vain as to endeavour at building a house without timber or mortar, or brick or stone.†
Book 9
- There is no happiness in this world without a competency.†
Book 13competency = ability
- Nay, the very children, the youngest, which is not two years old, excepted, feel in the same manner; for they are a most loving family, and, if they had but a bare competency, would be the happiest people in the world.†
Book 13
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.