incompetent

1. 1.

   someone who is not competent to take effective action

   Synonymsincompetent person

   Broaderunskilled person

   Narrowerbunglerslouch

Other forms of incompetent

plural

incompetents·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about incompetent

What does incompetent mean?

incompetent means "legally not qualified or sufficient". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in incompetent?

incompetent has 4 syllables: in-com-pe-tent. The stress falls on "com". In IPA it is /ˌɪnˈkɑmpətənt/.

What is another word for incompetent?

Close synonyms include unqualified, bungling, clumsy, fumbling, unskilled. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of incompetent?

The recorded antonyms are competent, competent.

Is incompetent a common word?

incompetent is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.