Competence

How to spell competence

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce competence

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does competence mean?

1. nounThe ability to do something successfully or to the required standard.
2. nounThe legal authority or jurisdiction of a court or official to deal with a matter.

Competence in a sentence

• The review praised her technical competence and attention to detail.

• The dispute fell outside the competence of the local tribunal.

• Basic financial competence is expected of every department manager.

• The lawyer questioned whether the case was within the court's competence.

Where does competence come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin competentia, meaning 'agreement' or 'suitability', which was built on the verb competere. That verb originally combined com-, meaning 'together', with petere, meaning 'to seek, strive, or aim at', so its literal sense was 'to strive together' or 'to meet, to coincide'. Over time competere came to suggest fitting or being suitable for a task, and from there English picked up the noun 'competence' in the early 1600s, first in the sense of a sufficient supply or adequate means of living, and later in the modern sense of the ability or skill to do something well. The same petere root sits inside the everyday words 'compete', 'petition', and 'appetite', all of which carry a flavour of seeking or striving. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel and the final -ence: the ending is -ence, not -ance, and the soft 'c' before the 'e' is what keeps the word from being spelled with an 's'.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• pet (from petere: to seek, strive)
• -ence (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or quality)