Word.ws English Dictionary

weaponised incompetence

weaponised incompetence is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of weaponized incompetence.

Meaning of weaponized incompetence

Noun

weaponized incompetence (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) A behavioral tactic where a person intentionally pretends to be incapable or performs tasks poorly in order to avoid responsibility and shift the workload to others.
    • 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. No. He should learn how to do them. Negligence as a domestic partner is unacceptable. Your exhaustion and unhappiness alone should be enough to...2018 May 8, Steve Almond, “Save Me From This Domestic Drudgery! The Sweet Spot column”, in New York Times

Questions about weaponised incompetence

What is weaponised incompetence the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of?
Weaponised incompetence is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of weaponized incompetence.

Words near weaponised incompetence in the dictionary

  1. weaponing
  2. weaponisable
  3. weaponisation
  4. weaponise
  5. weaponised
  6. weaponised incompetence
  7. weaponiser
  8. weaponisers
  9. weaponises
  10. weaponising
  11. weaponism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: weaponised incompetence (page history and authors); weaponized incompetence (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.

Last updated:

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