The concept of ineptitude , coming from the Latin word ineptitūdo , is linked to the absence of aptitude . The idea of aptitude, for its part, refers to the capacity or power to do something correctly.
For example: “The government's ineptitude in managing the economy is leading thousands of companies to bankruptcy” , “The technical director has already shown his ineptitude, now the club leaders must fire him and hire a more capable coach” , “I lost the trial due to the ineptitude of my lawyer.”
Ineptitude is often exposed when a person fails at a task. If a man applies for a job as a cook in a restaurant but ends up burning every meal he prepares , he will most likely be fired shortly after for his ineptitude, since a chef is expected to know how to prepare and serve food.
Many times, however, the failure to achieve an objective has to do with circumstances that go beyond the aptitude of an individual. Suppose that a basketball team suffers injuries to its two best players, while two other athletes refuse to train and play due to lack of payment. Given this situation, the team faces several games with youth players, losing all of those games . For some supporters, the fault lies with the coach, who is blamed for his inability to obtain positive results. Others, however, recognize that the problems transcend the coach and that is why they do not believe that the bad moment is linked to the lack of knowledge or skills of the team's tactical manager.
There is no doubt that the term ineptitude and its corresponding adjective, inept, have a negative connotation. It is very difficult to imagine a situation in which someone refers to another person using this adjective without feeling some type of anger or frustration at their lack of ability .
This does not mean that there is anything wrong with the word itself, so to speak. In our communication we need all the possible tools to express a wide range of feelings and to describe an endless number of events; If a person does not do their job well and, even worse, if we are harmed for this reason, it is not wrong to put it into words.
The problem begins when we use this adjective to insult the individual, because this can hurt their feelings. There is always a better way to say things. For example, if we are in charge of an employee who does not exhibit any skills and does poorly in all the tasks we assign him, unless we see a little hope we should fire him; When the time comes to talk to him, it is not necessary to attack him for his ineptitude, but in any case tell him that his performance has not been satisfactory.
If we add phrases like "I'm really sorry" or "I'm really sorry that this didn't work out" to the soft words, we can gently qualify the description of the situation without actually hurting the person. In fact, using the term ineptitude to describe an individual indicates that we are angry with them, and this is not always the case with an employee who does not meet their employers' expectations .
In the examples presented above we talk about a politician, a football coach and his team, and precisely these figures usually generate a feeling of passion in their followers, who place a lot of faith in them and dedicate dozens of hours a month to them. Every time your performance is not as expected, the disappointment can be very deep, and that is why the term ineptitude can appear to express it.