Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use incompetence in a sentence

29 example sentences · noun

Incompetence means an inability to perform; a lack of competence; ineptitude. Example: “Thanks to various kinds of endemic incompetence, humans show no prospect of ending all wars.”

Examples of incompetence by meaning

nounAn inability to perform; a lack of competence; ineptitude.

  • Perhaps it was for corruption or incompetence.1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished...
  • The factory where she worked was a poisonous mass of incompetence, favoritism, and sabotage.1974, Ursula Leguin, The Dispossessed

More sentences with incompetence

  • Thanks to various kinds of endemic incompetence, humans show no prospect of ending all wars.From the entry thanks to
  • The usual managerial incompetence was in evidence in yesterday's meeting.From the entry in evidence
  • It wasn't quite his incompetence as his being an AItheist that caused Chinmay to lose out on that promotion.From the entry aitheist
  • His tardy performance bordered on incompetence.From the entry tardy
  • Weaponised incompetence is a non-clinical term that has gained traction over the past decade.2024 June 4, Kellie Scott, “What is weaponised incompetence and how does it affect sharing the load in the home?”, in ABC News. From the entry weaponised incompetence
  • Plenty of us have experienced the shortfalls of other people’s incompetence.2023 March 8, Jamie Murray, “Weaponized incompetence is deeper than a TikTok trend”, in Michigan Daily. From the entry weaponized incompetence
  • Indeed, they are mired in corruption, incompetence and skewed to China’s strategic interests.2018 December 18, Karim Raslan, “2018 was meant to be Xi Jinping’s year. Then China’s Belt and Road unravelled”, in South China Morning Post. From the entry Belt and Road
  • Truth is for me I didn't know whether it was managerial incompetence or planned Scroogesque mismanagement.2014, Stephen Scala, Curly Dish Pig Tales, Balboa Press, Hay House, →ISBN, page 123. From the entry Scroogesque
  • If you're charmed by incompetence, that's just another kind of coulrophilia.2010, Monica Drake, Clown Girl: A Novel, page 239. From the entry coulrophilia
  • She constructed Anna's prewillingness as founded in her precompetence, rather than incompetence.2005, Helena Austin, Bronwyn Dwyer, Peter Freebody, Schooling the Child: The Making of Students in Classrooms. From the entry unwillingness
  • Incompetence was no joke when ( other ) people got killed by incompetence.1929, Crascredo, No Joke. From the entry no joke
  • It has taken me to some spectacular spots (and trudging along a few A-roads, too, but that is mainly my incompetence).2023 August 31, Emma Beddington, “Fish doorbells! Historic sandwiches! 50 of the weirdest, most wonderful corners of the web – picked by…. From the entry A-road
  • Even though the article, in comparison to TikTok, takes a more positive view of weaponized incompetence, the fundamental premise remains.2023 March 8, Jamie Murray, “Weaponized incompetence is deeper than a TikTok trend”, in Michigan Daily. From the entry weaponized incompetence
  • The domestic debacle unleashed by the pandemic, and global perceptions of American selfishness and incompetence, could change everything.2020 April 12, Simon Tisdall, “US's global reputation hits rock-bottom over Trump's coronavirus response”, in The Guardian. From the entry on course
  • “Incompetence should not be rewarded with blind loyalty.2017 July 23, Brandon Nowalk, “The great game begins with a bang on Game Of Thrones (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club. From the entry hard truth
  • His subsequent misslaughter of an animal in the following legend reveals a high degree of incompetence in the economic arena.2015, Timothy R. Tangherlini, Interpreting Legend (RLE Folklore), page 262. From the entry misslaughter
  • "Next up is a suit for procedural malfeasance, including false arrest, dereliction of duty, excessive force, and incompetence.2005 November 6, Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary, archived from the original on 27 Jan 2024. From the entry trial by media
  • It’s colorful, it’s visual, it’s easy to understand and it raises the most dangerous charge of all for any government — one of rank incompetence.2025 March 25, Jack Blanchard, “Playbook: Signalgate”, in Politico. From the entry SignalGate
  • Rather than reveal my level of incompetence by drashing in detail on the above, I'm going to do something easy, yet informative and entertaining.2007 July 5, in...@rambam.biz, “Parshat Pinchas: The Name Game”, in soc.culture.judaism.moderated (Usenet). From the entry drash
  • Trace that logic out a bit, and you arrive at a kind of weaponized incompetence: Your husband isn’t good at certain tasks, so he shouldn’t have to do them.2018 May 8, Steve Almond, “Save Me From This Domestic Drudgery! The Sweet Spot column”, in The New York Times. From the entry weaponized
  • The court noted this August, that an employee can be fired for cause based on incompetence, if he or she consistently fails to meet reasonable standards.2009 October 28, “Incompetence is cause for firing”, in Financial Post, Canada, retrieved 19 Oct 2010. From the entry for cause
  • It always felt as though Hain's career, which began so powerfully with his youthful campaigning against apartheid, was going to come unstuck, but through political incaution, not financial incompetence.2008 January 24, “The Maverick Insider”, in The Guardian. From the entry incaution
  • The hospital looks for the lone gunman—the individual, acting alone, acting counter to his training, who, through a gross act of incompetence . . . ."2002, Jed Mercurio, Bodies, →ISBN, page 340. From the entry lone gunman
  • As such, it remains a disingenuous exercise in crude politics, a blatant cultural scam which will do nothing but accelerate our already precipitous descent into mediocrity, incompetence, and desuetude.2000, David Solway, The Turtle Hypodermic of Sickenpods: Liberal Studies in the Corporate Age, McGill's-Queen's University Press, →ISBN…. From the entry thanatocracy
  • However, because the winch drivers' competence is more visible than the holdmen's, winch drivers are more vulnerable to supervision even though options for handling incompetence are limited contractually.1997, David Wellman, The Union Makes Us Strong, page 154. From the entry holdman
  • Incompetent deep veins lead to a reflux of blood pedally with the resultant dilation of distal veins, which itself causes valvular incompetence, setting up a vicious cycle.1989, Richard D. Liechty, Robert T. Soper, Fundamentals of surgery, page 312. From the entry pedally
  • And despite the gross incompetence of Hemmings' direction, the ludicrous script, and the heavy-handed acting, there remains a stellar reason to see and enjoy Just a Gigolo: David Bowie.1981 August 8, Rob Schmieder, “Starring Bowie and Berlin”, in Gay Community News, page 11. From the entry turkey

Meaning of incompetence

  1. noun An inability to perform; a lack of competence; ineptitude.

Full definition of incompetence

Questions about incompetence in a sentence

How do you use incompetence in a sentence?
Incompetence is used as a noun. For example: “Thanks to various kinds of endemic incompetence, humans show no prospect of ending all wars.”
What is a short sentence with incompetence?
“His tardy performance bordered on incompetence.”
What does incompetence mean?
Incompetence means an inability to perform; a lack of competence; ineptitude.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: incompetence (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this page: “How to use incompetence in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/incompetence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.