DISABILITY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Disability

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/dˌɪsəbˈɪlɪti/ /dɪsəbˈɪlɪtiz/ Listen

noun

disability n. (pl. disabilities)

State of being disabled; deprivation or want of ability; absence of competent physical, intellectual, or moral power, means, fitness, and the like. "Grossest faults, or disabilities to perform what was covenanted." "Chatham refused to see him, pleading his disability."

Want of legal qualification to do a thing; legal incapacity or incompetency. "The disabilities of idiocy, infancy, and coverture."

Synonyms: Weakness; inability; incompetence; impotence; incapacity; incompetency; disqualification. Disability, Inability. Inability is an inherent want of power to perform the thing in question; disability arises from some deprivation or loss of the needed competency. One who becomes deranged is under a disability of holding his estate; and one who is made a judge, of deciding in his own case. A man may decline an office on account of his inability to discharge its duties; he may refuse to accept a trust or employment on account of some disability prevents him from entering into such engagements.

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Etymology of 'Disability'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Disability" Quotes from Famous Books

... with the Portland Lumber Company, selling lumber in the Middle West before the war," he explained. "Uncle Sam gave me my sheepskin at Letter-man General Hospital last week, with half disability on my ten thousand dollars' worth of government insurance. Whittling my wing was a mere trifle, but my broken leg was a long time mending, and now it's shorter than it really ought to be. And I developed pneumonia with influenza and they found some T.B. indications ...

— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne

... it as a woman, I as a man. To me, there is a certain moral grandeur in the way he has disenthralled himself from fetters that could not remain, without a life-long disability." ...

— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... shall devolve on the vice-president; and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the president and vice-president, declaring what officer shall then act as president, and such officer shall act accordingly until the disability be removed, or a ...

— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... memories with extraordinary precision. In after life, for a long while, he was quite unable to gaze at an ordinary muscat grape or a coal-scuttle without either biting his comforter right through or being extremely sick. Naturally this disability coupled with the physical weakness and sense of impotence that he invariably experienced when in the company of his older companions occasioned him much unhappiness; in fact, many of the intense sorrows of his childhood were ...

— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... useful impediment may do so with secrecy and despatch on application (with fee). No permanent disability need be feared, a certain cure being guaranteed within one calendar month after date of signing peace, upon payment of a ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various

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