qualification
Pluralqualifications
- 1A skill, attribute, or completed professional training that improves someone's chances of being accepted for a position.
Fluency in three languages was her strongest qualification for the diplomatic post.
The job demands a qualification in engineering and several years of field experience.
Similarcredential, skill, attribute, asset, accomplishment
- 2An award such as a diploma, degree, or certificate that a person gains by passing an exam or finishing a course or training.
He left school with several qualifications, including an A-level in chemistry.
The course leads to a recognized qualification in accountancy.
Similarcertificate, diploma, credential, certification
Note
In British usage the word can name the award itself, something you can list on a form, earn from a course and hold several of: a person leaves school with qualifications or gains one in accountancy. Keep it apart from the broader 'fitness' sense, where a qualification is any ability or attribute that suits someone for a role, whether or not a certificate records it.
- 3A clause or condition that limits or modifies a statement, claim, or agreement.
The contract included a qualification excluding damage caused by misuse.
He accepted the offer without qualification.
Similarreservation, condition, proviso, caveat, limitation
Note
Here qualifying means narrowing: a qualification hedges a statement or an agreement so that it holds only so far. A single word can do the job. Oma Stanley's The Speech of East Texas (1937) calls usually "the qualification" that a claim about pronunciation needs. Typical frames are with the following qualification and its opposite, without qualification, meaning wholeheartedly or absolutely.
- 4The act or process of becoming eligible for a position, achievement, or similar goal.
The runner's qualification for the Olympic team came after months of training.
Qualification for the grant depends on meeting strict income limits.
Similareligibility
Oppositedisqualification, elimination
Note
The action noun from which the others branch: English borrowed it from Middle French in the 1540s, ultimately from Medieval Latin quālificātiō, and it reads naturally as qualify plus -ification. It usually takes for (qualification for the team, for a grant) and works both as a mass noun for the process in general and as a countable noun for one particular instance of it.
Less common meaning
- 5A quality or attribute belonging to a person or thing.
To shew, that these Qualfications, which we all pretend to be asham'd of, are the great support of a flourishing Society has been the subject of the foregoing Poem.
1714, Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the BeesNote
In this obsolete use the word simply names a trait, good or bad, with no hint of fitness for a role. Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees (1714) applies it to qualities "which we all pretend to be asham'd of": vices, not credentials. A modern reader will hear suitability or a diploma, so keep this sense for quoting or imitating older prose.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed in the 1540s from Middle French qualification, which in turn derives from Medieval Latin quālificātiō. By surface analysis it can be seen as qualify plus the suffix -ification.