2 uses
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Definition
capable (able to do something in a generally satisfactory manner) — sometimes specifically to have legal capability
- Consistent with the stereotype that praise from males is taken more seriously than praise from females, participants in the experiments rated the tutor computer as significantly more competent and more friendly when it was praised by a "male" computer than by a "female" computer.eight — Teaching Computers to Speak American (8% in)
- ...must accommodate itself to the whims, idiosyncrasies, dialects, and sheer ignorance of underprivileged minorities, especially if these happened to be black, Hispanic, and, later on, female or homosexual; (3) the introduction by more and more incompetent English teachers, products of the new system ... of ever fancier techniques of not teaching English, for which, if the methods involved new technologies and were couched in the appropriately impenetrable jargon, grants could readily be...one — The Language Wars (14% in)
There are no more uses of "competent" in Do You Speak American?.
Typical Usage
(best examples)