a. Obs. Also 7 -able. [app. f. L. compet-ĕre to be suitable or fit, to correspond (see COMPETENT), or f. its F. repr. compét-er in same sense + -IBLE. (Godefroy has one example of a F. competable = ‘competent’ of 1492.)]
1. Appropriate, suitable, properly applicable, befitting; competent.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1673), 167. The similitude in their spotted skins, which are not competible in Goats, but in Roes.
1635. Brathwait, Arcad. Pr., II. 35. How could they … receive any competible share in a client’s enforced bounty. Ibid. (1640), Boulster Lect., 8. Truth is, to a competible eye, nothing more intimately moving than beauty.
b. Const. to.
1586. Ferne, Blaz. Gentrie, 152. The coate-armor of the Auncestor is competible to all his children.
1665. Glanvill, Sceps. Sci., 20. These … are properties not at all competible to body or matter.
1687. Towerson, Baptism, 15. Circumcision was not competible to those of the Female Sex.
c. Const. with. Here there is sometimes confusion with COMPATIBLE.
1641. Bp. Mountagu, Acts & Mon. (1642), 494. It is a divine … Principality … nor is this competible with any creature.
1650. Heylyn, in Vernon, Life Heylyn (1682), 249. The Commission … is thought to be neither competable nor consistent with it [viz., a Convocation].
1651. Hobbes, Govt. & Soc., xviii. § 6. 350. The miracles which were onely competible with Christ.
1660. trans. Amyraldus’ Treat. conc. Relig., III. ii. 316. Let us now examine, whether the Doctrine of Indifference be competible with any of these Religions.
2. Legally competent.
c. 1638–58. Slingsby, Diary (1836), 232. I could not hold these persons my competible accusers.
