habilitation

Noun

habilitation (countable and uncountable, plural habilitations)

1. Equipment; qualification.
   • For the things which we formerly have spoken of, are but habilitation arms: and what is habilitation without intention and act?1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC
2. An act of habilitating.
3. An academic qualification, prerequiring a PhD, required in order to gain tenure as a professor in some European universities; a thesis or dissertation presented to achieve the qualification.
   • At this same time Gadamer was at work on his habilitation with Heidegger. His habilitation, Plato's Dialectical Ethics, concerned Plato's understanding of the good, and its two leading concepts were dialogue and dialectic.1994, Robert J. Dostal, “The Experience of Truth for Gadamer and Heidegger: Taking Time and Sudden Lightning”, in Brice Wachterhauser, editor, Hermeneutics and Truth, page 60
   • For one year it had been occupied by Otfried Müller, a priest from Silesia, who was trying simultaneously to advance the work for his habilitation—truly a difficult undertaking, considering the demands of teaching two core theological courses.1998, Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977, unnumbered page
4. (US) The act of supplying money to work a mine.