competent.
Having sufficient skill, knowledge, ability, or qualifications.
Meaning & usage
Having sufficient skill, knowledge, ability, or qualifications.
He is a competent skier and an expert snowboarder.
Having jurisdiction or authority over a particular issue or question.
For any disagreements arising from this contract, the competent court shall be the Springfield Circuit Court.
judicial authority having competent jurisdiction
Adequate for the purpose.
Functionally in order; functioning adequately.
a competent sphincter; a competent cervix; a competent immune system
Permeable to foreign DNA.
Resistant to deformation or flow.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English competent, conpetent, from Old French competent (modern French compétent), from Latin competens, competentem, present participle of competō (“coincide, be equal to, be capable of”). Compare Dutch competent (“competent”), German kompetent (“competent”), Danish kompetent (“competent”).
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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.