quality

«quality» in Mova's school dictionary: how good or bad something is: "the quality of the paper… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a quality, qualities; quality as uncountable); adjective (quality — informal: "quality time", "a quality product")

meaning for a pupil

1) Quality is how good or bad something is: "the quality of the paper is poor". tree →

2) Quality, used alone, often means high quality, very good: "they only sell quality shoes". tree →

3) A quality is a feature of a person's character: kindness and honesty are good qualities. tree →

4) A quality is a feature of a thing: "the soft quality of her voice". tree →

5) (informal, UK) "Quality!" is said to mean great or excellent. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science, quality is about what something is like (colour, texture) as opposed to quantity, how much there is. In everyday life we compare quality and price when shopping; "quality time" means time spent properly together. In stories, a character's qualities tell the reader what sort of person they are. Phrases: good quality, poor quality, quality control, quality time, high-quality, a leadership quality.

examples

• These pencils are good quality and do not break easily. tree →
• The photo is blurry because the camera is poor quality. tree →
• Kindness is her best quality. tree →
• Patience is an important quality in a teacher. tree →
• We spend quality time together at weekends. tree →
• The factory checks the quality of every toy before it is sold. tree →
• "We won the match 5–0!" "Quality!" tree →
• You get what you pay for: cheap boots, low quality. tree →
• The true leader proves himself by his qualities. tree →

note

Plural: qualities. Uncountable when it means how good something is ("the quality of the food"); countable for features ("two qualities"). Quality (how good) is not quantity (how many or how much) — pupils often mix up these words. "Quality" alone as an adjective is informal.

In the corpora

• Ericsson himself said 10,000 was not a magic rule and that the quality of practice mattered more than the count.
• "Value" on a shop's own brand can mean cheap and of low quality.
• In an ethics olympiad teams discuss a case in front of judges and are scored on the quality of their thinking.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «quality» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.