Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The condition of being disabled; incapacity.
  • noun The period of such a condition.
  • noun A disadvantage or deficiency, especially a physical or mental impairment that interferes with or prevents normal achievement in a particular area.
  • noun A program that provides financial support to people with such impairment.
  • noun Law Lack of legal capacity to perform some act, such as to enter into a contract, because of infancy or lack of soundness of mind.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Want of competent power, strength, or physical or mental ability: weakness; incapacity; impotence: as, disability arising from infirmity; a blind person labors under great disability.
  • noun Specifically Want of competent means or instruments.
  • noun Want of legal capacity or qualification; legal incapacity; incapacity to do an act with legal effect.
  • noun Synonyms Disability. Inability, incompetence, incapacity, disqualification, unfitness. Disability implies deprivation or loss of power; inability indicates rather inherent want of power. One declines an office from inability to discharge its duties, but is not elected to it because of some external disability disqualifying him for being chosen.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun State of being disabled; deprivation or want of ability; absence of competent physical, intellectual, or moral power, means, fitness, and the like.
  • noun Want of legal qualification to do a thing; legal incapacity or incompetency.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun State of being disabled; deprivation or want of ability; absence of competent physical, intellectual, or moral power, means, fitness, and the like.
  • noun Want of legal qualification to do a thing; legal incapacity or incompetency.
  • noun uncountable, informal Regular payments received by a disabled person, usually from the state

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the condition of being unable to perform as a consequence of physical or mental unfitness

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Circa 1570 disable +‎ -ity.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word disability.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.