competence

n.

1. 1. The state or quality of being adequately or well qualified; ability. See synonyms at ability.
   2. A specific range of skill, knowledge, or ability.
2. Law. The quality or condition of being legally qualified to perform an act.
3. Sufficient means for a comfortable existence.
4. Microbiology. The ability of bacteria to be genetically transformable.
5. Medicine. The ability to respond immunologically to bacteria, viruses, or other antigenic agents.
6. Linguistics. The knowledge that enables one to produce and comprehend a language.

Capacity of parties to an insurance contract to understand the meanings of their action in order for the contract to be valid.

noun

1. Physical, mental, financial, or legal power to perform: ability, capability, capacity, competency, faculty, might. See ability/inability.
2. Conferred power: authority, faculty, mandate, right. Law competency. See ability/inability.

n

Definition: ability
Antonyms: inability, inadequacy, incapability, incompetence, inefficiency, ineptness

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n

A measure of the degree of a person’s ability to cope with all aspects of the environment.

In hydrology, the largest size of particle that a river can carry. Just as the discharge of a river varies with climate, bed-floor roughness, and so on, so the competence of the river will vary with water depth and water surface slope. The very rough-and-ready sixth power law suggests that a doubling, for example, of river velocity would increase competence by 2⁶, i.e. by a factor of 64. See also hjulström curve.

competence, the term established by the American linguist Noam Chomsky to denote that unconscious store of linguistic knowledge which enables us to speak and understand our first language properly without having to think about it, permitting us to utter and comprehend sentences that we may never have heard before. Competence is what we know about the language we speak (without having to know that we know it), whereas performance is what we do with this knowledge in practice: that is, actual utterances. The distinction between competence and performance (similar to Saussure's distinction between langue and parole) is made in order to isolate the proper object of linguistics, which is to make the implicit rules of speakers' competence explicit in the form of grammar. The concept has been extended by theorists of communication, as ‘communicative competence’, and also adapted by some literary theorists who identify a ‘literary competence’ in experienced readers' implicit recognition of narrative structures and other literary conventions: a competent audience, for instance, will recognize the difference between the end of a scene and the end of the whole play, and so applaud at the right time.

1. Capacity to perform or teach a skill. See technical competency.

2. A basic psychological need to be able to succeed at optimally challenging tasks and achieve a desired outcome. See also self-determination theory.

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Common misspelling(s) of competence

• competance

Dansk (Danish)
n. - kompetence, gode kår, kompetens

Nederlands (Dutch)
bekwaamheid, bevoegdheid, vermogen (geld)

Français (French)
n. - compétence, (Jur) compétence (pour faire), (Ling) compétence, revenu suffisant, aisance

Deutsch (German)
n. - Fähigkeit, Kompetenz, Zuständigkeit

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ικανότητα, επάρκεια (προσόντων), επαρκής γνώση (γλώσσας κ.λπ.), αρμοδιότητα, σφαίρα αρμοδιότητας, (νομ.) ικανότητα δικαιοπραξίας

Italiano (Italian)
competenza

Português (Portuguese)
n. - competência (f)

Русский (Russian)
компетентность

Español (Spanish)
n. - competencia, aptitud, capacidad

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kompetens, kompetens (språkv.), behörighet (jur.)

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
胜任, 能力, 资格

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 勝任, 能力, 資格

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 적성, 상당한 자산, 언어능력

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 能力, 権能, 権限, 資産

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) كفاءة, جدارة, أهليه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮יכולת, כשרון, סמכות שיפוטית, הכנסה נוחה, כשרות, יעילות‬

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