incompetence
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See also: incompétence
English
Etymology
From French incompétence, equivalent to in- + competence.
Pronunciation
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Noun
incompetence (usually uncountable, plural incompetences)
- Inability to perform; lack of competence; ineptitude.
- Hyponym: weaponized incompetence
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
- ... at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals--morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck
- 1949 June 8, George Orwell , Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished : Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001:
- Winston did not know why Withers had been disgraced. Perhaps it was for corruption or incompetence. Perhaps Big Brother was merely getting rid of a too-popular subordinate.
- 1974, Ursula Leguin, The Dispossessed:
- The factory where she worked was a poisonous mass of incompetence, favoritism, and sabotage.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
inability to perform
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