Look up competence in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Competence is the condition or state of being authorised, or being capable of doing something, and has specific meanings in a number of fields: Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary logo Wiktionary is a Wikimedia Foundation project intended to be a free wiki dictionary (including thesaurus and lexicon) in almost every language. ...

• Competence (biology) is the ability of a cell to incorporate extracellular DNA from its environment.
• Competence (human resources) is a standardized requirement for an individual to properly perform a specific job.
• Competence (law) is the mental capacity of an individual to participate in legal proceedings. An organisation or body which has the inherent or deemed authority to make or interpret law may also be said to be "competent".

See also: competition In cell biology, competence is the ability of a cell, usually a bacterium, to take extracellular (naked) DNA from its environment (for example, the DNA of a lysed cell nearby) and incorporate the DNA into its genome. ... In law, competence is conerns the mental capacity of a individual to participate in legal proceedings. ... Competition is the act of striving against another force for the purpose of achieving dominance or attaining a reward or goal, or out of a biological imperative such as survival. ...