qualify

Formsqualifies, qualifying, qualified

1. 1
   verbintransitive

   To fall under a category or description by meeting the necessary conditions.

   With ten employees, the business qualifies as a small enterprise under federal rules.

   Storms must reach sustained winds of 74 miles per hour to qualify as hurricanes.

   Similarcount, rank, rate

   Note

   Here the subject passes a test rather than receiving a label, and the construction is almost always qualify as plus a category: a belief that qualifies as knowledge, repairs that qualify as a major capital improvement. The phrasing suits rules, definitions and arguments, where something either meets the conditions or does not. Swap as for for, and the meaning shifts toward eligibility for a post or task.

2. 2
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To make someone competent or eligible for a position or task, or to become competent or eligible oneself.

   His degree in accounting qualifies him for the controller position.

   After three years of apprenticeship, electricians qualify to work without supervision.

   Similarequip, fit, entitle, prepare

   Oppositedisqualify

   Note

   Both directions work: something qualifies a person, or a person qualifies, and the post or task follows for. Macaulay's essay on Samuel Johnson (1856) shows a third pattern, the reflexive. A man "had qualified himself for municipal office" by taking oaths, which makes the effort his own. That reflexive shape sounds formal and a little old-fashioned today.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To modify, limit, or moderate a statement, especially by adding conditions that must hold for it to be true.

   The senator qualified her support for the bill, citing concerns about its cost.

   Careful writers qualify sweeping claims with words like 'often' or 'in most cases.'

   Similarmodify, limit, moderate, temper, restrict

   Note

   Moderating is the older half of this sense. In Shakespeare's Sonnet 109 (1609) the speaker fears that "absence seem'd my flame to qualify." The thing being moderated there is a passion, not a claim. Modern use has narrowed to statements and stances: one qualifies a claim, a judgment, one's support. To qualify a statement is not to retract it. The statement stands, with limits attached.

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To compete successfully in one stage of a competition, earning a place in the next stage.

   Sixteen nations qualify for the tournament through regional playoffs.

   The sprinter qualified for the Olympic final with the third-fastest time in her heat.

   Similaradvance, progress

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To certify or license someone to perform a particular role or activity.

   The medical board qualifies physicians to practice in the state after they pass the licensing exam.

   The agency must qualify each inspector before assigning them to a job site.

   Similarcertify, license, accredit, authorize, approve

   Oppositedisqualify

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To describe or characterize something by stating the qualities it possesses.

   Reviewers qualified the proposal as ambitious but underfunded.

   Historians often qualify the period as one of rapid, uneven change.

   Similardescribe, characterize, label, class, designate

   Note

   The sense closest to how the word is built: Middle French qualifier, equivalent to quality plus -fy, so to qualify something is first of all to assign it qualities. It usually takes as plus a description (qualified the plan as ambitious). Keep it apart from the "meets the conditions" meaning: here someone passes judgment on a thing, while there the thing itself passes a test.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To give a distinctive quality to something; to modulate, vary, or regulate it.

   A skilled organist qualifies each note's attack to suit the acoustics of the hall.

   Painters qualify their colors with thin glazes, shifting tone without losing form.

   Similarmodulate, vary, adjust, temper, modify

   Note

   Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica shows the sense at work: a creature "hath no larynx … to qualify the sound," with nothing to shape or modulate it. The idea sits close to the word's make-up, giving a thing its quality. It differs from the limiting sense because nothing here is reduced, only shaped or varied.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   In juggling, to throw and catch each prop at least twice during a run.

   Jugglers typically qualify four balls long before they manage four clubs.

   She qualified seven rings at the festival, a personal best.

   Note

   A juggler's threshold for claiming a number: every prop must be thrown and caught at least twice, so qualifying seven balls takes at least fourteen catches. The verb is transitive, with the number or kind of prop as its object, as in qualify five balls or qualify four clubs. A run with fewer catches does not reach the threshold.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   In juggling, a run in which each prop is thrown and caught at least twice.

   A ten-catch run with five balls counts as a qualify.

   The festival logbook recorded dozens of qualifies with seven rings.

   Note

   The same threshold as the juggling verb, turned into a countable noun: a successful run is a qualify. The noun names the result rather than the act. Jugglers record a qualify with seven rings much as a runner records a time, and they can tally qualifies with a given number of props.

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