quality

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

[edit] English

Wikipedia has articles on:

Quality (disambiguation) and Quality

Wikipedia Wikipedia

[edit] Etymology

From Middle English, from Old French qualité, from Latin qualitatem, accusative of qualitas, from qualis (“‘of what kind’”), from Proto-Indo-European pronominal base *kwo- (“‘who, how’”). Cicero coined qualitas as a calque to translate the Ancient Greek word ποιότης (poiotes), “‘quality’”), coined by Plato from ποῖος (poios), “‘of what nature, of what kind’”).

[edit] Pronunciation

• IPA: /'kwɒl.ɪ.ti/, /'kwɑl.ɪ.ti/
•  Audio (US)^{help, file}

[edit] Noun

quality (countable and uncountable; plural qualities)

1. (uncountable) Level of excellence

   This school is well-known for having teachers of high quality.

   Quality of life is usually determined by health, education, and income.

2. (countable) A property or attribute that differentiates a thing or person.

   One of the qualities of pure iron is that it does not rust easily.

   While being impulsive can be great for artists, it is not a desirable quality for engineers.

   Security, stability, and efficiency are good qualities of an operating system.

3. (thermodynamics) In a two-phase liquid-vapor mixture, the ratio of the mass of vapor present to the total mass of the mixture.
4. (archaic) High social position.

   A peasant is not allowed to fall in love with a lady of quality.

   Membership of this golf club is limited to those of quality and wealth.

5. (uncountable) The degree to which a man-made object or system is free from bugs and flaws, as opposed to scope of functions or quantity of items.

[edit] Synonyms

• See also Wikisaurus:characteristic

[edit] Derived terms

• human quality
• industrial quality
• quality time
• quality of life
• Total Quality Management
• TQM
• qualitative

[edit] Related terms

• qualify

[edit] Translations

[edit] Adjective

quality (comparative more quality, superlative most quality)

1. Being of good worth, well made, fit for purpose.

   We only sell quality products.

   That was a quality game by Jim Smith.

   A quality system ensures products meet customer requirements.

   • a. 2003, Harriet (a Cambridge University student), quoted in John Ahier, John Beck, Rob Moore, Graduate Citizens?: Issues of Citizenship and Higher Education, Routledge (2003), ISBN 978-0-415-25722-0, page 114:

     I mean a lot of the money that obviously goes into universities and their libraries and their facilities and their academics and stuff but I mean I haven’t had a very quality degree to be honest. I think the quality of my education has been crap . . .

   • 2004, Vance M. Thompson, MD, in J. Kevin Belville and Ronald J. Smith (editors), LASIK Techniques: Pearls and Pitfalls, SLACK Incorporated, ISBN 978-1-55642-622-3, page 187:

     For one I wanted to have what I considered a very quality tracking device.

   • 2008, Carl Erskine, in Fay Vincent, We Would Have Played for Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk About the Game They Loved, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-1-4165-5342-7, page 144:

     A very quality ball club; that was the Braves.

[edit] Derived terms

• qualityness

[edit] Translations

[edit] Related terms

• qualia
• qualitative

[edit] External links

• quality in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• quality in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• quality at OneLook® Dictionary Search