Both Uses of
competent
in
Do You Speak American?
- (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 obtained;†
Chpt 1incompetent = 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.
- 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.†
Chpt 8 *competent = sufficiently capable
Definitions:
-
(1)
(competent) capable (able to do something in a generally satisfactory manner) -- sometimes specifically to have legal capability
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) 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.