incompetent
not competent; lacking qualification or ability; incapable: an incompetent candidate.
characterized by or showing incompetence: His incompetent acting ruined the play.
Law.
being unable or legally unqualified to perform specified acts or to be held legally responsible for such acts.
inadmissible, as evidence.
an incompetent person; a mentally deficient person.
Law. a person lacking power to act with legal effectiveness.
Origin of incompetent
1synonym study For incompetent
Other words for incompetent
Opposites for incompetent
Other words from incompetent
- in·com·pe·tent·ly, adverb
Words Nearby incompetent
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use incompetent in a sentence
Investigations are ongoing, but it’s already clear this was a tragedy of incompetent leadership, failed intelligence and a giant mess of missed or crossed communications.
The danger of right-wing mobs is real. Fencing at the U.S. Capitol won’t help. | Philip Kennicott | February 1, 2021 | Washington PostI just needed to prove it because the city of Washington is notoriously incompetent and always assumes it is right.
Gene Weingarten: I somehow owed D.C. $24,000. But not so fast! | Gene Weingarten | December 10, 2020 | Washington PostIt is the reverse, especially now when representative democracy has produced truly incompetent governments in many places.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, former French president, dies at 94 | Jim Hoagland | December 2, 2020 | Washington PostYou are not eligible to vote if you claim voting residence outside the District or have been declared legally incompetent to vote by a court of law.
D.C. voting guide: What to know about early voting, mail-in ballots | Michael Brice-Saddler | October 29, 2020 | Washington PostIt was also littered with anti-Whitmer content, including a headline calling her “America’s most incompetent politician,” according to a cached version of the page.
Michigan kidnapping plot, like so many other extremist crimes, foreshadowed on social media | Craig Timberg, Isaac Stanley-Becker | October 8, 2020 | Washington Post
Early on, the sexual protagonist complains that her Molson-drinking husband is pretty much an incompetent Neanderthal.
‘A Gronking to Remember’ Speed Read: 8 Naughtiest Bits | Emily Shire | January 7, 2015 | THE DAILY BEASTThe cops were as incompetent as they often appear to be in the Holmes stories.
Insufficient protocols or incompetent practices for and by the nurses in the hospital hot zone.
To buy that you would have to accept that Brooks was either negligent or incompetent.
Murdoch on the Rocks: How a Lone Reporter Revealed the Mogul's Tabloid Terror Machine | Clive Irving | August 25, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTAccording to the historian John Saunders, he was a “weak, vain, incompetent and cowardly” leader.
In Threatening Baghdad, Militants Seek to Undo 800 Years of History | Justin Marozzi | August 16, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTIt is the fashion there to regard it merely as a device to help an incompetent organist.
The Recent Revolution in Organ Building | George Laing MillerIn such incompetent hands the malt business soon fell to be a liability rather than an asset.
The Eve of the Revolution | Carl BeckerPromotion came speedily when the guillotine cleared the way in the higher ranks by removing the incompetent and unfortunate.
Napoleon's Marshals | R. P. Dunn-PattisonThe acts done under incompetent rulers, by those who disapprove of their claims, come from neither.
The Ordinance of Covenanting | John CunninghamIt was inelastic, incompetent to adapt itself to changing circumstances.
The English Church in the Eighteenth Century | Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
British Dictionary definitions for incompetent
/ (ɪnˈkɒmpɪtənt) /
not possessing the necessary ability, skill, etc to do or carry out a task; incapable
marked by lack of ability, skill, etc
law not legally qualified: an incompetent witness
(of rock strata, folds, etc) yielding readily to pressure so as to undergo structural deformation
an incompetent person
Derived forms of incompetent
- incompetence or incompetency, noun
- incompetently, adverb
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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