competence
(ˈkɒmpɪtəns)
[a. F. compétence ‘competencie, conueniencie, sufficiencie, aptnesse, fitnesse, agreeablenesse; also concurrencie, compettitorship’ (Cotgr.): cf. It. competentia ‘competencie, conueniencie, also contending for one same thing’ (Florio), Sp. competencia ‘competencie, corriualitie; sufficiency, conueniency’ (Minsheu); ad. L. competentia (post-class.) meeting together, agreement, symmetry, planetary conjunction; f. competent- pr. pple. of competĕre: see compete v.1 and v.2.]
I. In sense of compete v.2
† 1. Rivalry in dignity or relative position, vying.
| 1594 Carew Huarte's Exam. Wits xv. (1596) 266 Man..seeing that the angels with whom he had competence were immortall [cf. ‘Made a little lower than the angels’]. |
II. In sense of compete v.1
† 2. An adequate supply, a sufficiency of. Obs.
| 1597 Shakes. 2 Hen. IV, v. v. 70 For competence of life I will allow you, That lacke of meanes enforce you not to euill. 1623 Massinger Bondman iv. ii, A competence of land freely allotted To each man's proper use. 1714 Gay What d'ye call it? Prelim. Sc. 3, I will have a ghost; nay, I will have a Competence of Ghosts. 1740 Gray Lett. in Poems (1775) 101 Such a private happiness (supposing a small competence of fortune) is almost always in one's power. |
3. a. A sufficiency of means for living comfortably; a comfortable living or estate; = competency 3.
| 1632 Massinger City Madam iv. i, I shall be enabled To make payment of my debts to all the world, And leave myself a competence. 1640–1 Kirkcudbr. War-Comm. Min. Bk. (1855) 65 To appoynt to hir ane competance out of hir said husband's estate. 1742 Young Nt. Th. vi. 509 A competence is vital to content. 1815 Jane Austen Emma i. ii, An easy competence, enough to secure the purchase of a little estate. 1871 Blackie Four Phases i. 6 He had been left some small competence by his father. 1882 Shorthouse J. Inglesant II. 51 Earn a competence and fame. |
b. The condition of having sufficient means for living comfortably; easy circumstances.
| 1738 Swift Imit. Horace ii. vi. (R.), Preserve, Almighty Providence! Just what you gave me, competence. 1752 Johnson Rambler No. 206 ¶5 They..growled away their latter years in discontented competence. 1814 Wordsw. Excursion vi. Wks. 496/2 Robbed of competence, And her obsequious shadow, peace of mind. 1864 Tennyson En. Ard. 82 Seven happy years of health and competence. |
4. a. Sufficiency of qualification; capacity to deal adequately with a subject.
| 1790 Burke Fr. Rev. 291 To make men act zealously is not in the competence of law. 1796 ― Let. Noble Ld. Wks. 1842 II. 258 Conferring upon me that sort of honour, which it is alone within their competence..to bestow. 1805 Foster Ess. ii. vi. 198 Even the experience of failure augments his competence. 1860 Tyndall Glac. ii. xxi. 343 To doubt my own competence to understand it. 1880 W. B. Carpenter in 19th Cent. 595 Naturalists of the highest competence in their respective departments. |
b. esp. Law. The quality or position of being legally competent; legal capacity or admissibility.
| 1708–15 Kersey, Competence, or Competency in Law, the Power of a Judge, for the taking Cognisance of a Matter. 1827 Hallam Const. Hist. (1876) III. xvii. 312 The court of session..possessed no competence in criminal proceedings. 1886 Sir E. Fry in Law Times Rep. LIII. 623/1 It was within his competence to say that he would not appoint a new trustee. |
c. Adequacy of a work; legitimacy of a logical conclusion; propriety.
| 1851 Mrs. Browning Casa Guidi Windows 27 By force of his own fair work's competence. a 1852 Hamilton Logic (1860) II. 465 It shows at a glance the competence or incompetence of any conclusion. |
d. The ability of a stream or current to carry fragments of a certain size. Also attrib.
| 1877 G. K. Gilbert Rep. Geol. Henry Mts. v. 110 A stream which can transport débris of a given size, may be said to be competent to such débris. Since the maximum particles which streams are able to move are proportioned to a sixth power of their velocities, competence depends on velocity. 1914 ― Transp. Debris by Running Water 86 A current flowing over debris of various sizes transports the finer, but cannot move the coarser; the fineness of the debris it can barely move is the measure of its competence. Ibid. 187 The group of constants designated by Greek letters..may be called competence constants. 1960 B. W. Sparks Geomorphology v. 80 Competence is measured by the weight of the largest fragment which the stream can transport. |
e. Biol. The state or quality of embryonic cells of permitting characteristic development in response to a stimulus.
| 1932 C. H. Waddington in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. CCXXI. 223 This competence is a new potentiality which has arisen. The idea of competence covers two concepts already in use, reactionsfähig and labil determiniert. Reactionsfähig means that the tissue..is competent to differentiate to a certain tissue but requires a definite stimulus. 1954 New Biol. XVII. 122 The group of cells..passes into a relatively brief phase of sensitivity (called ‘competence’) to the influence of neighbouring tissues. |
f. Linguistics. (See quot. 1966.) Opp. performance.
| 1962 N. Chomsky in Proc. 9th Internat. Conf. Linguists (1964) 915 The description of linguistic competence provided by the grammar is not to be confused with an account of actual performance. 1966 ― in T. A. Sebeok Current Trends in Linguistics III. 3 A distinction may be made between what the speaker of a language knows implicitly (what we may call his competence) and what he does (his performance). A grammar, in the traditional view, is an account of competence. It describes and attempts to account for the ability of a speaker to understand an arbitrary sentence of his language and to produce an appropriate sentence on a given occasion... Performance provides evidence for the investigation of competence. 1968 Chomsky & Halle Sound Pattern Eng. i. 3 One fundamental factor involved in the speaker-hearer's performance is his knowledge of the grammar that determines an intrinsic connection of sound and meaning for each sentence. We refer to this knowledge—for the most part, obviously, unconscious knowledge—as the speaker-hearer's ‘competence’. 1969 Language XLV. 323 Linguistic inquiry has succeeded only when..it began to ask about the individual's organization of language—what has come to be called his ‘linguistic competence’. Ibid., The distinction between performance and competence in the child is a critical one for understanding how language emerges in the individual. |
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Senses 4 e, f in Dict. become 4 f, g. Add: [II.] [4.] e. Med. Ability (of a valve or sphincter) to function normally.
| 1895 J. H. Clarke Dis. Heart & Arteries ii. 22 The affection of the mitral valve was so far remedied that it has been restored to competence. 1902 Amer. Jrnl. Physiol. VI. 264 (heading) The competence of the ileocæcal valve. 1977 Jrnl. Cardiovasc. Surg. XVIII. 507/2 The method of assessment of insufficiency of canine aortic valves..can be usefully employed for ascertaining the competence of the homograft valves, just before implantation. 1986 Jrnl. Surg. Res. XL. 567/1 This flow was maintained by the competence of the atrioventricular and pulmonary valves. |