6 uses
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Definition
capable (able to do something in a generally satisfactory manner) — sometimes specifically to have legal capability
- From which she had attained a very competent skill in politics, and could discourse very learnedly on the affairs of Europe.Book 6 (8% in)
- 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 1 (35% in)
- 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 (65% in)
- 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 (10% in)
- There is no happiness in this world without a competency.Book 13 (63% in)
- 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 (66% in)
There are no more uses of "competent" in Tom Jones.
Typical Usage
(best examples)