Noun

Singular quality

Plural countable and uncountable; plural qualities

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.

Synonyms

• See also Wikisaurus:characteristic

Derived terms

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

Related terms

• qualify

Quality may refer to:

Concepts:

• Quality (business)
• Quality (philosophy), an attribute or a property
• Quality (physics), which has separate meanings in thermodynamics and harmonics
• Vapor quality (thermodynamics), the ratio of mass of vapor to that of vapor and liquid
• Energy quality, used in various science disciplines

In music:

• Quality, referring primarily to the timbre, but also dynamics (music) and musical texture, of a section or piece
• Quality (album), by rapper Talib Kweli

Other uses:

• Quality, California, community in Kern County
• Quality Comics, an American comic book publisher between 1939 and 1956
• Quality Communications, a comic book publisher started in 1982
• Quality Records, a Canadian entertainment company
• Quality press, a category of newspaper in the UK

Quality can refer to:

1. A specific characteristic of an object (the qualities of ice - i.e. its properties)
2. The achievement or excellence of an object (good quality ice - i.e. not of inferior grade)
3. The essence of an object (the quality of ice - i.e. "iceness")
4. The meaning of excellence itself

The first meaning is technical, the second practical, the third artistic, and the fourth metaphysical.

Sourced

• A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be.
  • Charles Peirce, Collected Papers (lecture 3 of Lowell Lectures of 1903), vol. 1, para. 536, Harvard University Press (1934).

• Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Mixed Opinions and Maxims, aphorism 370, “The Danger in Admiration,” (1879).

• It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Speech, January 1842, at the Masonic Temple in Boston, repr. in The Dial (1843) and Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (1849).

• It’s the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. It’s a quality to be proud of. But it’s a quality that many people seem to have neglected.
  • Gerald Ford, Time (January 28, 1974)

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Sat Jun 20 04:13:53 2009