Word.ws English Dictionary

dequalification

dequalification noun: a change so as to require less skill and knowledge, often leading to less responsibility and control.

Noun

dequalification (usually uncountable, plural dequalifications)

  1. (usually) A change so as to require less skill and knowledge, often leading to less responsibility and control.
    • Middle management is particularly threatened with dequalification (reduction in decision-making, supervision and control) .1990, Federico Butera, Vittorio Di Martino, Eberhard Köhler, Technological Development and the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
    • According to Braverman's thesis, Taylorism, or scientific management, has been the key feature in the devaluation and dequalification of work.2016, Lorraine Giordano, Beyond Taylorism, page 28
  2. (usually) The process by which someone is forced to work below the level of their skills and qualifications.
    • Along the same lines, it appears that by accepting some degree of occupational dequalification in relation to real educational level, and a more or less precarious situation, most young people managed to find work after leaving school, although for the most part by themselves, the ANPE having...1978, R. A. de Moor, Changing Tertiary Education in Modern European Society: Report, page 187
    • Dequalification is an imposed status, hitting women hardest in fields historically dominated by men, e.g., medicine and engineering.2008, Joyce Marie Mushaben, The Changing Faces of Citizenship, page 110
  3. (usually) The change in status from qualifying (for something) to not qualifying.
    • Thus, it is impossible to create any objective standard as to what particular conditions would justify dequalification of the HMO.1976, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Subcommittee on Health, Health Maintenance Organization Amendments 1975, page 407
    • If the “fiscal requirement” were left open as to content, it would require Fund negotiation ("conditionality" ) of precisely the type that the major rejects — as well as the strong likelihood of periodic dequalifications and requalifications of countries that would be immensely destabilizing.2000, Report of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, page 121
  4. (usually) The removal of distinctions; homogenization
    • This 'dequalification', which is equivalent to a loss of memory, is also a cultural process.2012, L. Augustin-Jean, H. Ilbert, N. Saavedra-Rivano, Geographical Indications and International Agricultural Trade
    • For Guattari this democratization is fundamentally capitalist because the systematic dequalification of expression, and its sectorization and bipolarization of values in capitalism, treats everything as formally equal and so 'puts differential qualities and non-discursive intensities under the...2017, Christopher Braddock, Animism in Art and Performance, page 250

Examples of dequalification in a sentence

  • However, here it may be noted that dequalification does often happen when new technologies replace older ones in one and the same field of activity.2018, Mats Alvesson, Organization Theory and Technocratic Consciousness:
  • This implies a dequalification of positions, dequalification which can be either only technical or both technical and social.2023, Guglielmo Carchedi, On the Economic Identification of Social Classes:
  • They interpret the liberal code reform as an attempt to reduce dequalifications, especially of the young labor force, by avoiding incarceration ( Steinert 1978).2016, Joachim J. Savelsberg, Constructing White-Collar Crime, page 20:
  • One of the consequences of this division was the moralistic dequalification of neutrality by both superpowers.2016, Stephen K. Badzik, Josef B. Binter, Karl E. Birnbaum, Towards a Future European Peace Order?, page 121:

Forms of dequalification

pluraldequalifications

Origin of dequalification

From de- + qualification.

Questions about dequalification

What does dequalification mean?
Dequalification means a change so as to require less skill and knowledge, often leading to less responsibility and control.
How do you use dequalification in a sentence?
However, here it may be noted that dequalification does often happen when new technologies replace older ones in one and the same field of activity.
What part of speech is dequalification?
Dequalification is a noun.
What is the plural of dequalification?
The plural of dequalification is dequalifications.

Words near dequalification in the dictionary

  1. depyrogenates
  2. depyrogenating
  3. depyrogenation
  4. DEQ
  5. Deqing
  6. dequalification
  7. dequalifications
  8. dequalinium
  9. dequantitate
  10. dequantitated
  11. dequantitates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dequalification (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “dequalification.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dequalification. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.