Competency

How to spell competency

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce competency

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does competency mean?

1. nounThe ability to do something successfully or to a required standard.
2. nounThe legal capacity or authority to act, testify, or stand trial.

Competency in a sentence

• The assessor checked each nurse for clinical competency before sign-off.

• The court ordered an evaluation of the defendant's competency to stand trial.

• The role demands a high level of technical competency with spreadsheets.

• A judge ruled on the witness's competency to give evidence.

Where does competency come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb competere, which combined com- 'together' with petere 'to seek, strive, or aim at', giving a literal sense of 'to strive together' or 'to come together to a point'. In later Latin competere shifted to mean 'to be fit, suitable, or sufficient', the idea being that things meet or agree as they should. English took the related noun in the late 1500s, first using competency to mean an adequate supply or a comfortable sufficiency of means to live on. Over time the focus moved from having enough money to having enough skill, so that today competency chiefly names the ability or qualification to do a task well. The very same petere root powers a family of English words, including compete, petition, and appetite, where the sense of seeking or striving is still visible. The tricky spelling is the unstressed middle: writers often forget the second 'e' in -ten- and the soft 'c' before -ency.

How the word is built

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