Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The quality or state of being incompetent.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Same as incompetency.
Wiktionary
- n. Inability to perform; lack of competence; ineptitude.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The quality or state of being incompetent; lack of physical, intellectual, or moral ability; lack of qualifications or training (for a particular task); insufficiency; inadequacy.
- n. (Law) Lack of competency or legal fitness; incapacity; disqualification, as of a person to be heard as a witness, or to act as a juror, or of a judge to try a cause.
WordNet 3.0
- n. lack of physical or intellectual ability or qualifications
- n. inability of a part or organ to function properly
Examples
“The only reason that this incompetence is allowed is by the administrations distractions and the media love affair with Mr. Obama.”
The Honduras article Sen. Kerry (D, MA) didn’t want you to see. - Moe_Lane’s blog - RedState
“Two retired generals today blasted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for what they call incompetence and bad leadership.”
“The letter added: Sorry, but the word 'incompetence' comes to mind for those responsible for this blunder.”
“In this interview Harry discusses the SECs failure, goes after the SEC for what he terms their incompetence, how he, his family and his teams lives were threatened, the fact that Bernie Madoff was a mob boss, Greenspans failure as Fed Chairman, he knew Madoff was a fraud, criminal banking syndicates, how ruthless Madoff was, the devastation and heartbreak in the wake of the fraud and much more.”
“Harry discusses the SECs failure, goes after the SEC for what he terms their incompetence, how he, his family and his teams lives were threatened, the fact that Bernie Madoff was a mob boss, Greenspans failure as Fed Chairman, he knew Madoff was a fraud, criminal banking syndicates, how ruthless Madoff was, the devastation and heartbreak in the wake of the fraud and much more.”
“Government incompetence is something that terrorists and other criminals should keep in mind, and not take it for granted that a reasonably benign government will successfully figure out how to capture them without killing them.”
“This kind of institutional Governmental incompetence is why we need to privatize assassination!”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Assassination, Self-Defense, and the Koh Speech
“Sarcastro: This kind of institutional Governmental incompetence is why we need to privatize assassination!”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Assassination, Self-Defense, and the Koh Speech
“Yes, the other side will immediately accuse Israel of murder, even when incompetence is the much more obvious explanation.”
“Perhaps you should advocate better ways to track elected officials rather than throwing your hands up in incompetence and giving up.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘incompetence’.
-
EN - fine scholarly language
exhort, accretion, twenty-nine, atrophy, additive, brilliantly, interreligious, empiricism, pathologic, limitless, half-century, vigilant and 488 more...
-
The insulting ones
ingrate, sycophant, inane, wanton, pompous, vitriolic, ghastly, cesspool, abhor, highfalutin, obsequious, insidious and 25 more...
-
Words
My list of words.
veritable, facetious, nadir, quixotic, apropos, acquiesce, ostensible, insipid, egregious, inveterate, coax, adroit and 409 more...
-
kewpid's Words
moleskine, araldite, dessicate, cellar door, grotesque, fallacy, vendetta, raindrop, panacea, ethereal, hircus, treppenwitz and 446 more...
-
big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
-
MEC3 Lesson 136
benefit, bias, bound, incompetence, dialect, experiment, forum, minority, participant, pathology, pattern, peer and 4 more...
-
if you don't have anything nice to say
animosity, twit, fury, scorn, intrusive, abomination, affront, aggressive, antisocial, apalling, armada, avaricious and 85 more...
-
bzzzzt's Words
subversion, conflagration, skewer, cavernous, procrastination, eviscerate, effigy, desensitize, incompetence, corpulent, dirigible
-
Nick's Words
Words I often can't recall when I need to use them. Plus some interesting words I like.
paranoid, ineffable, syncopated, authenticity, euphemism, profundity, ambiguous, consequential, contingent, apropos, veg-eatables, autoantonym and 56 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for incompetence.
Prolagus Today, I visited an Apple Store. The computer floor. And watched outside. The iPhone Army. Jul 12, 2008
john It's the new iPhone. Which I don't have, but I've had the beta version of the iPhone OS 2.0 on a dev phone at work for the past two weeks, and it's a big improvement, even on the old phone.
It amuses me that we're talking about this on "incompetence." Jul 11, 2008
bilby What's the Jesus phone? WYD special? Jul 11, 2008
kewpid I was met with a triple whammy of this whilst getting the Jesus phone. The two minute task of filling in a web form stretched to the better part of an hour as layer upon layer of management failed to understand their own computer system. Jul 11, 2008