Definition of "qualify"

qualify

/ˈkwɑl.ɪ.faɪ/

verb
third-person singular simple present qualifies, present participle qualifying, simple past and past participle qualified
1. To describe or characterize something by listing its qualities.
2. To make someone, or to become competent or eligible for some position or task.
  Quotations
  He had qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession.
  1856 December, [Thomas Babington] Macaulay, “Samuel Johnson ”, in T[homas] F[lower] E[llis], editor, The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, new edition, London: Longman, Green, Reader, & Dyer, published 1871
3. To certify or license someone for something.
4. To modify, limit, restrict or moderate something; especially to add conditions or requirements for an assertion to be true.
  Quotations
  O! never say that I was false of heart,Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify
  1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 109”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley
5. (now rare) To mitigate, alleviate (something); to make less disagreeable.
  Quotations
  he balmes and herbes thereto applyde, / And euermore with mighty spels them charmd, / That in short space he has them qualifyde, / And him restor'd to health, that would haue algates dyde.
  1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie
6. To compete successfully in some stage of a competition and become eligible for the next stage.
7. To give individual quality to; to modulate; to vary; to regulate.
  Quotations
  It hath no larynx […] to qualify the sound.
  1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […]
8. (juggling) To throw and catch each object at least twice.
noun
1. (juggling) An instance of throwing and catching each prop at least twice.

Definition of "qualify"

qualify

verb

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

noun