habilitation

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Equipment; qualification.

   “For the things which we formerly have spoken of, are but habilitation arms: and what is habilitation without intention and act?”

2. (countable, uncountable)An act of habilitating.
3. (countable, uncountable)An academic qualification, prerequiring a PhD, required in order to gain tenure as a professor in some European universities; a thesis or dissertation presented to achieve the qualification.

   “At this same time Gadamer was at work on his habilitation with Heidegger. His habilitation, Plato's Dialectical Ethics, concerned Plato's understanding of the good, and its two leading concepts were dialogue and dialectic.”

   “For one year it had been occupied by Otfried Müller, a priest from Silesia, who was trying simultaneously to advance the work for his habilitation—truly a difficult undertaking, considering the demands of teaching two core theological courses.”

   “In 1892 his^([Kazimierz Twardowski's]) dissertation on Descartes, Idee und Perception, appeared and was followed in 1894 by his habilitation thesis, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen.”

   “In the period from 1803 to 1932 as a whole, professors of law were on average the youngest to complete their Habilitation (28.5 years), trailed by theologians (29.8 years) and natural scientists (29.8 years).”

4. (US, countable, uncountable)The act of supplying money to work a mine.