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competence.

The quality or state of being competent, i.e. able or suitable for a general role.

10 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkɒm.pə.təns/UK/ˈkɑm.pə.təns/Atlantic-Canada, US/ˈkɒm.pə.təns/Boston, Canada, Maine/ˈkɔm.pə.təns/Australia
  1. The quality or state of being competent, i.e. able or suitable for a general role.

    uncountable
  2. The quality or state of being able or suitable for a particular task; the quality or state of being competent for a particular task or skill.

    countable
  3. The system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language, as opposed to its actual use in concrete situations (performance), cf. linguistic competence.

    countable · uncountable
  4. A sustainable income.

    countable · dated · uncountable
  5. the legal authority to deal with a matter.

    countable
    The bill was denied royal assent because the Scottish Parliament does not have legislative competence on the bill's matter.
  6. The degree to which a rock is resistant to deformation or flow.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Middle French compétence, from Late Latin competentia. Doublet of competency.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.