Meaning & use
qualified
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Meanings
adjectivecomparable
Having the training, skills or official certificates needed to do a job or activity.
Grammar: Often followed by for or to: qualified for the job; qualified to teach.
Patterns
- qualified for something
- qualified to do something
- highly qualified
She is fully qualified to teach English.
The company hired a qualified electrician.
He was not qualified for the senior role.
adjectivebefore a nounformal
Limited by conditions or reservations rather than being complete or total.
Grammar: Appears before nouns such as support, success or approval: a qualified yes.
Patterns
- qualified approval
- qualified success
The proposal received qualified support from the board.
It was only a qualified success, since sales were below target.
She gave the plan a qualified yes, pending a budget review.
Word forms
| comparative | more qualified |
|---|---|
| superlative | most qualified |
Common combinations
- highly qualified
- The nurse was highly qualified for the post.
- fully qualified
- She is a fully qualified pilot.
- qualified teacher
- Every class has a qualified teacher.
- qualified success
- The launch was a qualified success.
- qualified to
- He is qualified to give legal advice.
Synonyms and how they differ
- certified
- Certified means an official body has confirmed your ability, while qualified is broader and can also mean simply being suitable.
- competent
- Competent describes how well someone does a job, but qualified describes the formal credentials or fitness to do it.
- eligible
- Eligible means allowed or entitled to something, whereas qualified means able to do it.
- conditional
- For the limited sense, conditional means depending on something, while qualified means partly limited with reservations.
Opposites
Word family
- qualify verb
- to become or make someone suitable or eligible
- qualification noun
- a certificate or skill that makes someone suitable
- qualifier noun
- someone who qualifies, or a word that limits meaning
- unqualified adjective
- lacking the needed skills, or complete and absolute
Commonly confused: qualified or quantified?
qualified vs quantified
Quantified means measured or expressed as a number, and has nothing to do with being skilled or limited.
Practice
The board offered only ___ approval, saying it would decide after seeing the final budget.
Choose one answer.
Qualified approval means approval with conditions or reservations. Unqualified would mean complete, which contradicts the waiting for the budget.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “qualified”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.